John F. Kennedy's Go-To Lunch In The White House Was This Creamy New England Fave

When President John F. Kennedy sat down for lunch in the White House, one of his favorite meals harked back to his Massachusetts roots. While his wife Jackie Kennedy may have been more drawn to simple French-influenced casseroles, like her four-ingredient Casserole Marie Blanche, her husband preferred something a little more down-home. He was known as a "soup, sandwich, and fruit" man, according to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. His soup of choice was often chowder. But you might be surprised to learn that it wasn't New England clam chowder — he wasn't a fan of the mollusk — but rather fish chowder.

Jackie's recipe for his favorite chowder consisted of 10 ingredients, including salt pork, haddock, potatoes, heavy cream, bay leaves, and a few other ingredients (but not corn, which is often found in fish chowder). It's a simple dish that's in line with some of Kennedy's other favorite foods, like steak, white-meat turkey, and his two go-to cocktails, a classic daiquiri and a good bloody Mary. By some accounts, it was this haddock chowder that sustained Kennedy on his road to the White House.

John F. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1917 into an Irish-American family who'd been in New England since the 1840s. So perhaps it was inevitable that he was drawn to this regionally beloved dish with a rich history. One of the Kennedy family's favorite Boston restaurants was the Union Oyster House, the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the United States. Raw oysters, lobster, and, of course, chowder were (and still are) all on the menu. Even after becoming president, Kennedy would eat there whenever possible.

It was when Kennedy was on the campaign trail for the 1960 presidential election that he apparently became even more attached to this soup. Kennedy would leave his home in Washington, D.C. each morning with a thermos filled with Jackie's haddock chowder under his arm as he politicked. She had a stock of the soup in the freezer for unexpected guests as well. Since Jackie was a New Yorker by birth, you'd think she would have been more inclined to make a Manhattan chowder; but John, as a good New Englander, probably wouldn't have touched it.