An NAACP Image Award Finalist for Outstanding Literary Work--Non Fiction

James Beard award-winning author Adrian Miller vividly tells the stories of the African Americans who worked in the presidential food service as chefs, personal cooks, butlers, stewards, and servers for every First Family since George and Martha Washington. Miller brings together the names and words of more than 150 black men and women who played remarkable roles in unforgettable events in the nation's history. Daisy McAfee Bonner, for example, FDR's cook at his Warm Springs retreat, described the president's final day on earth in 1945, when he was struck down just as his lunchtime cheese souffle emerged from the oven. Sorrowfully, but with a cook's pride, she recalled, He never ate that souffle, but it never fell until the minute he died.

A treasury of information about cooking techniques and equipment, the book includes twenty recipes for which black chefs were celebrated. From Samuel Fraunces's onions done in the Brazilian way for George Washington to Zephyr Wright's popovers, beloved by LBJ's family, Miller highlights African Americans' contributions to our shared American foodways. Surveying the labor of enslaved people during the antebellum period and the gradual opening of employment after Emancipation, Miller highlights how food-related work slowly became professionalized and the important part African Americans played in that process. His chronicle of the daily table in the White House proclaims a fascinating new American story.

BIO

Adrian Miller--author of Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, which won a James Beard Foundation book award--worked as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton. He is a certified Kansas City Barbecue Society judge and former Southern Foodways Alliance board member. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

REVIEWS

"With humor and scholarship, Adrian Miller has written an essential and uplifting expose, ensuring that another group of overlooked African American culinary professionals is remembered and celebrated for its contributions to American foodways." --Toni Tipton-Martin, author of The Jemima Code

"Adrian Miller details the many subtle and not-so-subtle contributions of African American culinary professionals to the food history of the White House. The people, black and white, in The President's Kitchen Cabinet come across as real, engaged, and accurately placed in their own history, and the White House is refreshingly portrayed as a living institution that has changed dramatically over time." --Leni Sorensen, founder-director of the Indigo House Culinary History and Rural Skills Center

"Miller opens a door into a fascinating world that few ever think about: the White House kitchens. There, he brings to light a realm shaped by an often-ignored group of African Americans who have nurtured the first families so they could lead a nation." --Booklist

[H] University of North Carolina Press  /  February 20, 2017

0.93" H x 9.09" L x 6.43" W (1.28 lbs) 296 pages

[P] University of North Carolina Press  /  May 07, 2018

0.8" H x 9.1" L x 6.1" W (1.0 lbs) 296 pages