Eat Like Abe Lincoln. Sort of.

Barack Obama’s taste in food has gotten a fair amount of attention in the last year: when it came out that he likes arugula, the anti-intellectuals of the country wrinkled their collective noses (and then wondered what the hell arugula was). And a just-surfaced video showed him waxing about no-frills Southern food. Then there was all the hubbub about whether or not he was going to tell White House chef, Cristeta Comerford, to go pack her knives, replacing the Filipino-born, Vienna-trained top toque of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with a big name all-organic locavore of a chef.

Now comes word that the Inauguration lunch is going to be Lincoln-themed: the 44th president has been reading the 16th president’s writings of late, and he’s even going to be sworn in on the Bible that Lincoln used at his Inauguration, so why not ape his food choices, too? But WWLE (What would Linoln eat), you ask?

The lunch starts off with seafood stew (paired with a Napa Valley sauvignon blanc) and then a “brace of American birds” (in this case, pheasant and duck) accompanied by sour cherry chutney. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess Lincoln didn’t eat a lot of chutney. The dessert course consists of apple cinnamon sponge cake with a sweet cream glaze. And just for good measure, the food will be served on replicas of Lincoln’s china. The meal, however, won’t replicate what Lincoln ate for his own Inauguration lunch in 1861, which was decidedly less regal than the 2009 version: he chowed down on corned beef and cabbage and blackberry pie.

And just for the sake of transparency, the recipes are all online, in case you want to eat like Lincoln did. Sort of.

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