Richard Nixon's Southern Snack Food: Cottage Cheese With A Secret Ingredient

As the 37th President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, was known for many things. He was, for example, Commander-in-Chief when the Paris Peace Accords were signed and the U.S. began to withdraw from the Vietnam War. Of course, he's also the reason that "gate" has become a suffix attached to every modern scandal. Between wars and coverups, we often forget that Nixon was also one of the presidents with the most bizarre eating habits. One food in particular comes up surprisingly often when we talk about how Nixon ate: cottage cheese.

It may be that he was little more than a product of his time, as cottage cheese peaked in popularity in the 1970s when Nixon was in office, but even for the time, he was known to eat a lot of it. According to The Washingtonian, all he needed to dress up a bowl of the watery curds was a sprinkle of good old Lawry's Seasoned Salt.

If you've never had it before, Lawry's is an all-in-one seasoning mix intended to be sprinkled on just about everything. With a recipe including sugar, salt, onion and garlic powder, celery seed, paprika, and turmeric, it is not hard to see how a hefty sprinkle of Lawry's could enliven a bowl of otherwise plain cottage cheese. And when you compare it to another Nixon favorite, cottage cheese with ketchup, the Lawry's version actually sounds pretty alright.

Now, cottage cheese was not considered to be Nixon's most-loved meal — meatloaf was his favorite food — but it did play an outsize role in the history of his administration. In addition to the Lawry's- or ketchup-doused bowls that Nixon was known to breakfast on, strangely enough, the fresh cheese also book-ended his time in office. On the night of his inauguration, the Nixon family sat down to a celebratory meal together. Apparently, however, the order caught the White House staff by surprise. Four steaks were ordered, and to accompany the beef, the Nixons wanted cottage cheese.

This apparently led to a mad dash, with White House staff taking off to search around town for the dairy product, eventually locating some at a local deli. In addition to filling the table on the night that started his time as U.S. President, cottage cheese showed up again to end it. On the day that he announced his resignation, Nixon's last meal in office was centered around those same pale curds, this time served atop pineapple slices with a glass of milk.

At the time of his presidency, the average American was eating around five pounds of cottage cheese each year. Even without any real numbers to back it up, it's clear that Nixon was eating much more than that. And while none of Nixon's recipes (if you can call them that) could be considered among the best ways to use cottage cheese, his dairy staple is making a modern resurgence. One can only imagine how much of the stuff Nixon would've eaten if he'd known about the viral TikTok cottage cheese recipes like flatbreads and chocolate mousse.