Franklin D. Roosevelt faced the Great Depression, Adolf Hitler, an isolationist Congress, a hostile Supreme Court, and the physical consequences of polio.

None of them made his life as miserable as the woman who controlled what he ate every day.

That particular challenge came from Henrietta Nesbitt, the White House housekeeper whose iron control over the presidential kitchen produced one of the strangest running battles of the Roosevelt administration. FDR could reshape the federal government, mobilize the nation for war, and persuade millions of Americans that fear itself was the principal thing they needed to fear.

He could not, however, persuade Mrs. Nesbitt to stop serving broccoli.

Eleanor Roosevelt Hires a Friend

Henrietta Nesbitt did not arrive at the White House with the sort of résumé one might expect from the person placed in charge of feeding the president of the United States.

She was a neighbor of the Roosevelts in Hyde Park, New York, and had worked alongside Eleanor Roosevelt in the local League of Women Voters. After Henrietta’s husband lost his job during the Great Depression, she began operating a small home bakery to help support the family.

She knew how to make bread and cakes. That is useful experience when applying to manage the domestic operations of a private home. It is somewhat less comprehensive preparation for supervising approximately thirty employees, feeding diplomats and Cabinet members, organizing state dinners, and keeping the Executive Mansion functioning while several generations of Roosevelts and assorted houseguests wandered through it.

Eleanor was not looking for a celebrity chef or an experienced hotel manager. She wanted someone she trusted—someone hardworking, economical, loyal, and sympathetic to her ideas about how the White House should operate.

Nesbitt met all those qualifications. Eleanor hired her as White House housekeeper and found a job for Henrietta’s husband, Henry, as a White House custodian.

This was fortunate for the Nesbitts.

It was less fortunate for Franklin’s appetite.

The Great Depression Comes to Dinner

Eleanor Roosevelt believed the White House should set an example during the Great Depression. While millions of Americans were struggling to put food on the table, the president and first lady should not appear to be dining nightly on pheasant under glass while a string quartet played “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”

Before FDR’s first inauguration, Eleanor consulted home-economics experts at Cornell University about creating inexpensive, nutritionally balanced meals. One early luncheon reportedly cost only seven and a half cents per person and consisted of stuffed eggs in tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, whole-wheat bread, and prune pudding.

It was less a luncheon than an edible public-service announcement.

Eleanor loved the idea. Food could demonstrate thrift, nutrition, scientific household management, and solidarity with ordinary Americans. Taste was presumably somewhere farther down the list, possibly written lightly in pencil.

The Cornell menus proved too austere for ordinary use, but their basic philosophy survived under Mrs. Nesbitt: simple ingredients, modest portions, little extravagance, and nothing that might cause a diner to become dangerously enthusiastic about lunch.

That approach did not entirely suit FDR.

Roosevelt had grown up in a wealthy Hudson Valley family surrounded by excellent cooks and fresh food from the family estate. He enjoyed steak, seafood, game, rich sauces, cocktails, and many of the other things one expects a man to appreciate after spending an afternoon discussing monetary policy.

Nesbitt believed in plain food plainly prepared.

FDR preferred food that gave some indication it had not abandoned hope.

FDR was hardly the only president whose culinary preferences became part of his public identity. From George Washington’s fondness for hoecakes to more modern presidential appetites, the White House has hosted an impressive range of tastes—some refined, some predictable, and some best explained by the fact that nobody wanted to argue with the commander in chief. You can explore the favorite foods of every United States president here.

The White House Kitchen Was Genuinely Horrifying

To be fair, Mrs. Nesbitt inherited serious problems that had nothing to do with the consistency of the mashed potatoes.

When she and Eleanor inspected the White House kitchen in 1933, they found an antiquated and unsanitary workplace. It contained dark wooden cupboards, outdated sinks, questionable electrical wiring, a rusty dumbwaiter, and a wood-lined refrigerator that smelled bad.

Cockroaches were present, apparently having secured permanent civil-service status.

Mice, rats, squirrels, ants, and other uninvited residents also appeared around the mansion. The White House may have been the people’s house, but the definition of “people” had become distressingly broad.

Nesbitt pushed for a complete renovation. In 1935, the kitchen was rebuilt with modern appliances, improved workstations, better storage, and safer equipment. Eleanor also arranged for improved dining, locker, and lounge facilities for White House employees.

These were substantial improvements, and Nesbitt deserves genuine credit for recognizing the problem and insisting that it be corrected.

The White House kitchen had finally entered the twentieth century.

The menus declined to accompany it.

The President Begins to Rebel

Nesbitt was the White House housekeeper, not technically its cook. White House cooks handled most of the actual food preparation, but Nesbitt planned menus, purchased supplies, issued instructions, and supervised the kitchen closely enough to receive most of the credit, blame, and requests that she please stop serving sweetbreads.

Sweetbreads, for anyone fortunate enough not to know, are neither sweet nor bread. They are usually the thymus or pancreas of a calf or lamb, because the English language occasionally enjoys luring diners into a false sense of security.

Nesbitt had a propensity for repeating menus that featured broiled kidneys on toast, chipped beef on toast, curried eggs on toast, creamed chicken, creamed beef, creamed celery, liver, string beans, and sweetbreads.

A longtime White House maid later recalled that Nesbitt hovered over the cooks so effectively that dishes somehow emerged overcooked, undercooked, or otherwise defeated.

Toast and cream sauce seem to have been used primarily to conceal evidence.

FDR expressed his frustration in a memorandum to Eleanor. He reminded her that he had recently complained about being served chicken approximately six times a week. The chicken situation had improved, he acknowledged, but only because the kitchen had substituted sweetbreads at roughly the same frequency.

He left no room for misinterpretation: “My stomach positively rebels.”

Roosevelt added that the situation was harming his relations with foreign powers because he had bitten two visiting dignitaries that day.

The memorandum was dated April 29, 1942. The United States was fighting a global war on two fronts, and its commander in chief nevertheless had to devote part of his day to drafting a formal protest against repeated organ meat.

Mrs. Nesbitt Knows Best

FDR’s complaints produced remarkably little change.

When he made it clear that he disliked broccoli, Nesbitt continued serving it because she believed it was good for him. The president’s personal preferences were apparently considered advisory.

On another occasion, Roosevelt requested hot coffee for himself and several guests. Iced tea appeared instead.

When he was ill and asked for canned white asparagus, Nesbitt reportedly insisted that none could be obtained. One of his secretaries went shopping and returned with ten cans.

Eventually, Nesbitt provided FDR with a coffeemaker so that the president of the United States could prepare his own coffee.

It was a small victory, rather like capturing an enemy outpost while the opposing army still controlled the entire continent.

Newspapers became aware of the culinary struggle. In 1937, after another sequence of liver and string beans, one headline announced, “Same Menu Four Days Palls on Roosevelt.”

Nesbitt and Eleanor concluded that the president did not genuinely object to the food. He was merely overworked and “in a tizzy.” Statements such as “the vegetables are watery” and “I’m sick of liver and beans,” Nesbitt later explained, had apparently been figures of speech.

In her defense, most intelligent people have a hard time taking politicians’ words at face value.

The Menus Became Creatively Alarming

The problem was not always blandness. Occasionally, the White House kitchen attempted innovation, which presented an entirely different category of danger.

Nesbitt’s collection of recipes included something called Bobotee Salad, made with cold rice, bananas, almonds, chicory, curry powder, French dressing, and Worcestershire sauce.

That is not a recipe so much as the result of a pantry collapsing during an earthquake.

Another appetizer consisted of pineapple sticks rolled in crushed peppermint candy. Pear salad involved canned pear halves covered with cream cheese, cream, chives, ginger, or nuts. For additional visual excitement, the pears could be purchased already tinted green—or the mayonnaise itself could be colored green.

There are moments when history ceases to be an academic discipline and becomes a warning.

White House guests noticed the food.

Senator Hiram Johnson described one dinner featuring indifferent chowder, nearly cold mutton, unappealing peas, an insubstantial salad, and bad dressing. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes once struggled to recognize a formal leg of lamb after the kitchen had finished negotiating with it.

Ernest Hemingway attended dinner at the White House in 1937 and later complained of “rainwater soup” followed by “rubber squab.” His companion, journalist Martha Gellhorn, had eaten three sandwiches at the airport beforehand.

She apparently knew the unofficial Washington rule: when invited to dinner at the Roosevelt White House, eat before leaving home.

The King of England Gets a Hot Dog

Not every unusual Roosevelt meal was a disaster.

During the 1939 visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Roosevelts famously served the royal couple hot dogs at a picnic in Hyde Park. The newspapers treated the matter as a minor diplomatic crisis. Reporters debated whether the king should pick up the hot dog with his hands, use a knife and fork, or request the immediate mobilization of the Royal Navy.

The king reportedly ate two hot dogs and asked for more.

The meal worked because it was deliberately informal rather than accidentally unfortunate. A properly prepared hot dog is simple, recognizable, and enjoyable. It does not require cream sauce, organ meat, or mayonnaise colored to resemble lawn clippings.

The episode proved that plain food could be successful at the Roosevelt table.

It merely had to be food people wanted to eat.

Why Didn’t FDR Fire Henrietta Nesbitt?

The obvious question is why Roosevelt tolerated the situation.

He was, after all, the president. He appointed Cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, generals, judges, and administrators. Surely he possessed sufficient constitutional authority to obtain a decent fried egg.

The answer was Eleanor.

FDR had given his wife control over the domestic operations of the White House. Eleanor trusted Nesbitt, valued her loyalty, admired her thrift, and regarded her as indispensable. She approved the menus Nesbitt brought to her each morning and generally dismissed Franklin’s complaints.

For Eleanor, meals were primarily fuel and an opportunity for conversation. She could become so absorbed in a discussion that the precise condition of the food barely registered.

For Franklin, dining was one of life’s pleasures.

This difference would have been manageable if Eleanor had hired an excellent cook.

Instead, she hired someone who appeared to view appetite as a character defect.

Some Roosevelt biographers have playfully described Nesbitt as “Eleanor’s revenge,” suggesting that her extraordinary job security may have reflected the complicated tensions within the Roosevelt marriage.

That interpretation is impossible to prove. Still, it is difficult not to notice that Franklin repeatedly complained about the food while Eleanor and Henrietta repeatedly agreed that he did not actually mean it.

FDR respected Eleanor’s authority over the household and never directly ordered Nesbitt’s dismissal. His willingness to preserve that arrangement may have been admirable.

It was also why the sweetbreads kept coming.

FDR Establishes a Rival Government

In 1941, following the death of his mother, Sara Roosevelt, FDR attempted a culinary uprising.

He brought Sara’s cook, Mary Campbell, from Hyde Park to prepare meals for him in a small kitchen on the White House’s upper floor.

The commander in chief had effectively established a government-in-exile three stories above Mrs. Nesbitt.

Nesbitt objected. She believed Campbell’s cooking was too rich for the president and disliked losing control over any part of the White House food operation.

FDR had managed to create the New Deal, but his Kitchen Deal remained stalled in committee.

The Fourth-Term Campaign Promise

As the 1944 election approached, one question overshadowed nearly every political conversation: Would FDR seek an unprecedented fourth term? Even some of those closest to the president were uncertain about what he intended to do.

Roosevelt eventually agreed to run again, but he reportedly offered friends a considerably less statesmanlike explanation for his decision. He wanted to win a fourth term “just so I can fire Mrs. Nesbitt.”

It was a compelling campaign platform. The nation needed experienced wartime leadership, continuity in foreign affairs, and perhaps a vegetable that had not been boiled into surrender.

Roosevelt won the election. He carried thirty-six states and defeated Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey by more than three million popular votes.

Then came FDR’s fourth inaugural luncheon in January 1945.

The president requested chicken à la king. Nesbitt decided that serving it hot to the large crowd would be impractical, so the president received chicken salad instead.

The rest of the austerity-conscious meal included rolls without butter, cake without frosting, and coffee without sugar.

Entertainer George Jessel joked that the chicken salad contained an impressive amount of celery and remarkably little chicken.

FDR had won an unprecedented fourth term.

He still could not order lunch.

Bess Truman Discovers Executive Authority

Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, less than three months after his fourth inauguration. Nesbitt remained temporarily at the White House under President Harry Truman.

Unlike Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Truman did not regard Henrietta Nesbitt as indispensable.

The two women clashed over household management, supplies, and Nesbitt’s unwillingness to accept direction from the new first lady.

A widely repeated story claims the final dispute involved Nesbitt refusing to give Bess Truman a stick of rationed butter for a luncheon. Whether the butter incident was truly the last straw is difficult to establish, but Nesbitt was dismissed in 1946.

Franklin Roosevelt had spent more than twelve years trying to reform the White House menu.

Bess Truman required considerably less time.

Henrietta Nesbitt Was More Than a Bad Menu

It would be unfair to remember Nesbitt solely as the woman who terrorized FDR with liver.

She managed an enormous and complicated household through the Great Depression and World War II. She supervised dozens of employees, organized major functions, dealt with wartime rationing, improved staff facilities, and helped modernize a kitchen that had been antiquated and unsanitary.

Eleanor considered her loyal, capable, and essential. Under Nesbitt’s management, the White House household continued functioning through twelve exceptionally demanding years.

Nesbitt’s great weakness was that she approached food with the confident inflexibility of someone who believed that enjoyment was evidence of poor planning.

She could organize the household, stretch a budget, enforce rationing, supervise a state dinner, and make certain the linens were ready.

She simply could not be persuaded that the person eating the meal should have any meaningful role in selecting it.

The Limits of Presidential Power

Franklin Roosevelt guided the United States through economic collapse and global war. He transformed the presidency, established programs that continue to shape American life, and became the only person elected president four times.

Millions listened to his fireside chats. Congress enacted his programs. Generals carried out his orders. Kings, prime ministers, and diplomats traveled across oceans to seek his counsel.

Yet every evening, Roosevelt faced the same humbling reminder that presidential power has limits. His distant cousin Theodore Roosevelt had famously observed that he could either be president of the United States or control his daughter Alice, but he could not possibly do both. FDR confronted a similar choice: He could be the most powerful man in the world, or he could decide what he was having for lunch. Apparently, he could not do both.

Even the presidency has its limits.

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