On this day in 1804, President Thomas Jefferson led a crowd in the eating of “the mammoth loaf,” a giant piece of bread baked in remembrance of a giant cheese wheel the president had received a couple of years earlier. Not kidding.
First, let’s talk about that cheese. It came from Cheshire, Mass., as a sign of gratitude for his support of religious tolerance. The French Revolution tried to strip the influence of Christianity from the government, and locals were worried Jefferson would do the same. The cheese, made from the milk of 900 cows, was essentially a “thank you for not persecuting us.”
It turns out, though, that eating a so-called “mammoth cheese” required a mammoth amount of cheese-eating. The thing stuck around for two whole years, and it’s not entirely clear what happened to it (or how close to the rind it got.) The country, for a time, became obsessed with “mammoth foods.” As part of that trend, a Navy baker showed up with a humongous loaf of bread to a party meant to rally support for a war in the Caribbean. To make it more appealing for guests to chow down, he also brought a bunch of roast beef and booze. As you might expect, the event turned pretty rowdy. A few decades later, President Andrew Jackson one-upped the mammoth food trend by bringing in an even bigger cheese wheel.
You can read more about the mammoth food trend at the National Constitution Center.
