Kicking It Up a Notch On the Campaign Trail

GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is calling out GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney over whether fried chicken should be eaten with the skin on (Huckabee) or off (Romney), which bring to mind another political rivalry over “proper” food ettiquette which I’ve mentioned before in passing but which has also been noted by the folks at Emeril Lagasse’s place:

Question: In 1930, Governor Huey Long began extolling the virtues of a popular Southern food, calling it “the noblest dish the mind of man has yet conceived.” He also gave explicit directions on how the dish was to be eaten. By the following year, his pronouncements had generated a national debate, with Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York taking an opposing view. What was the food in question, and how did Long and Roosevelt differ over how it should be eaten?

Answer: The food was potlikker, the liquid left in the pan from cooking turnip greens or collards. Long proclaimed that it should be eaten with cornpone, which should be dipped in the potlikker. Crumbling the pone into a bowl of potlikker was strictly taboo. Roosevelt, on the other hand, preferred to crumble his cornpone into the potlikker.