We cannot tell a lie: this cake looks a lot like a pie

Presidents Day is hardly a gastronomic festival. Aside from a nod to George Washington -- cherry pie, anyone? -- there's not really any great food associated with the Oval Office.

Sure, Ronald Reagan liked jelly beans and Bill Clinton hankered after fast food, but if you want to know what the presidents ate, you have to look to the first ladies.

Thanks to a fortuitous yard-sale find, bequeathed to me by a generous neighbor, I have in my possession "The First Ladies Cook Book: Favorite Recipes of All of the Presidents of the United States" (Parents' Magazine Press, 1969), by Margaret Brown Klapthor, then an associate curator at the Smithsonian Institution, and Helen Duprey Bullock, senior editor and historian with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The book takes us from the days of George and Martha Washington through Richard Nixon's first term, detailing the menus, china and recipes brought to the presidential table. The recipes are attributed to the first ladies, and only brief mention is made of the chefs, servants and, in the case of the earliest presidents, slaves who labored behind the scenes.

In the earliest days of the Republic, the presidential fare seems largely influenced by English cookery. Martha Washington served up Steak and Kidney Pie with English Trifle for dessert, while recipes attributed to Abigail Adams' tenure include the British bread pudding known as Beggar's Pudding.

But as early as Thomas Jefferson's term, the cuisine of France started influencing the cookery of England, appearing in the form of Boeuf a la Mode and Chartreuse (a molded vegetable dish).

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