It’s all too clear that we as a society yearn for a bandwagon upon which to jump. Nowadays, trends seem to spark like flint beneath a hammer strike. From Dubai chocolate to cottage cheese and mustard, there are almost no limits on the influencing capabilities of social media. But how did trends start prior to social media? In the United States at least, the president had some sway over food trends in years past. Take Ronald Reagan’s love for jelly beans, which sparked a fad for the colorful candy, and Nixon chicken.
While the dish most often associated with Richard Nixon is Watergate salad (a dessert with mostly mythic links to his infamous Watergate scandal), a more accurate Nixon dish is the eponymous Nixon chicken. There are various iterations of the vintage, kitsch casserole floating around the internet. But, at the most basic level, the dish consists of chicken breasts, condensed chicken soup, shredded cheese, mayo, and broccoli combined in a pan and baked until bubbly and delicious.
Nixon chicken is so named because it was first popularized by the Nixon family. As to which Nixon invented it, that is up for debate: Nixon chicken has been tied to Richard’s daughters, Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Tricia Nixon, as well as his wife, Pat. However, the exact origins of this dish go far beyond the Nixon family. It stretches into the roots of another classic chicken dish that, like so many popular foods, started in the world of fine dining and ended in the hodgepodge world of home-cookery.
A tale of two chicken dishes
The originator of Nixon chicken is murky, but according to “Nixon Volume II: The Triumph of a Politician 1962-1972,” Nixon chicken was the creation of Julie Nixon Eisenhower. According to the volume, Julie made a “chicken casserole with broccoli topped with cheese and Jell-O” for her father and mother while they visited her at Amherst College in Massachusetts. According to some online Nixon chicken fans, Julie Nixon Eisenhower also showcased her recipe on an appearance on “The Mike Douglas Show.” While she did co-host the show for a week, there appears to be no recordings, so this account should be taken with a grain of salt. This dish doesn’t precisely resemble the dish we now know as Nixon chicken (the inclusion of Jell-O seems particularly amiss), but it does feature the bones of what we know as Nixon chicken.
Still, similar recipes have floated about the Nixon family. Tricia Nixon, for example, showcased a similar recipe on a 1972 episode of “Dinah’s Place.” Additionally, another similar recipe by Pat Nixon can be found in the records of Nixon’s presidential library. Each of these dishes resemble the others, so there is very clearly a connection between them. Perhaps it’s just one of those recipes that seems to float about a family, each member making the dish their own.
The origins of Nixon chicken
While we may never know which member of the Nixon family introduced Nixon chicken to popular culture, we do know the dish that inspired this easy, tasty casserole. Neither Pat Nixon nor Tricia Nixon’s take on the chicken and broccoli concoction were ever called “Nixon chicken” by them. Rather, their recipes were called chicken Divan, a favorite dish of Richard Nixon. However, it’s safe to say that no one familiar with chicken Divan would accuse the Nixons’ takes on the dish of being a faithful adaptation.
Chicken Divan was a popular dish in the early 20th century. It was first invented between the 1930s and 1940s at the Divan Parisien Restaurant, located within the Chatham Hotel in New York City. No exact, original recipe for the dish was ever released, but it included broccoli, chicken breast, Parmesan cheese, and perhaps a béchamel or other cream sauce to top. The dish was notably creamy and savory and was considered, for a few decades at least, the height of sophistication. From its popularity at the Divan Parisien, the dish took on a new life with home cooks looking to replicate the dish’s creamy consistency and rich flavor. Since there was no official recipe, home cooks soon began putting their own spins on the dish. This brings us to the much scrappier Nixon chicken, which replaces Parmesan and béchamel or white sauce with condensed soup mix, cheddar (or American cheese), and mayonnaise. What could be more American than that?
