The Beef Soup JFK Credited With Helping Him Win The Primary

It isn't often that a politician offers a soup recipe to his opponent. But that's exactly what happened in an exchange of polite letters between John F. Kennedy and Senator Hubert H. Humphrey in 1962. Kennedy was sworn in as 35th President on January 20, 1961, and his famous inauguration speech ("ask not what your country can do for you") lifted up Americans worried about global political and social unrest. Over a year later, in a letter dated September 12, 1962, Humphrey acknowledged that Kennedy was the "Leader of the New Frontier" and suggested that JFK try his wife Muriel's beef soup recipe. "It is loaded with vitamins and guarantees a Democratic victory," the senator claimed. JFK's assistant responded that the president had acquired the recipe in 1960 while in West Virginia and credited the hearty soup for the "Vim, Vigor and Vitality that saw him through a tough primary."

Soup was one of JFK's favorite foods, and he often had it for lunch. Kennedy especially enjoyed New England fish chowder. He was also known for combining soups. For instance, he would have New England clam chowder with Manhattan clam chowder and canned pea soup with canned tomato soup, which he called "puree Mongol soup." Muriel Humphrey's beef soup may have come to Kennedy's attention when it appeared in a collection of recipes contributed by U.S. politicians in 1959 a year before the historic West Virginia primary.

In Muriel Humphrey's beef soup recipe, the meat is stewed with carrots, onion, celery, cabbage, and tomatoes for almost three hours, and today, we would probably call it old-fashioned beef stew. It's certainly a comfort food, which John F. Kennedy undoubtedly needed to endure the 1960 primary in West Virginia. At that point, Kennedy was a known political commodity who had served in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate for years, but he was fighting an uphill battle to secure the nomination over Humphrey because he was a Catholic. As the nomination was coming down to the wire, he trailed Humphrey in mostly Protestant West Virginia when his religion became an issue, and so he canvassed the state, listening to voters' concerns and assuring them that religion would play no role in his Presidency.

Kennedy convinced Appalachian voters that a Catholic president could indeed represent their interests, and Kennedy beat Humphrey, winning the nomination. Other than JFK's word for it, we don't know for certain whether Muriel's beef soup really did get him through that grueling time. But if we look again at his letter to Humphrey, it might be construed as a subtle dig that his rival's wife may have inadvertently led Kennedy to triumph.