This Is the Plate: Utah Food Traditions, edited by Carol A. Edison, Eric A. Eliason, and Lynne S. McNeill, is a cornucopia of information about Utah foodways that will appeal to scholars and the general public alike. It is first and foremost a handsome, heavy book, a quality that contrasts intriguingly with the glossy front-cover photograph of ordinary-looking French fries, such as might be served at any fast-food restaurant, spilled alongside a small plastic cup filled with a creamy, salmon-colored substance.
The choice of fries and pink-orange sauce for the cover of a book on food may surprise non-Utahns, but will not surprise people familiar with the Beehive State and those who recognize the substance as fry sauce. Fry sauce is a local variation of Russian dressing. Consisting of mayonnaise and ketchup, it was allegedly invented as “fry sauce” in the 1940s or 1950s by Iceberg Drive-In, a local franchise still in existence, and is preferred by many Utahns to ketchup. As McNeill notes in the introduction, Utah is not known for fine cuisine, and cuisine is not what this book explores or celebrates. Rather, it contains celebrations, histories, descriptions, and reminiscences of foods that are associated with the state, that are deemed traditional, and that are somehow associated with a regional identity. In this respect, fry sauce is the perfect choice.
For those who recognize fry sauce (it can be found in Indiana as well) but wonder about the book’s somewhat odd title, This Is the Plate is a tongue-in-cheek play on Brigham Young’s directive that Mormon pioneers should settle in the Salt Lake Valley. Many people know that the dominant religion in Utah is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS). Brigham Young is the LDS prophet who led the Saints out of Missouri and into what in 1847 was Mexico and today is Utah. Surveying the Salt Lake Valley, he announced, “This is the place,” meaning that the emigrants should settle there. This is the Plate thus indicates the strong Latter-Day Saint influence on Utah foodways, some aspects of which are outlined below.
The book is divided into four sections: Official Foods/Icons, Heritage, Latter-Day Saint Influence, and Local Specialties, although these designations are somewhat arbitrary and overlap. The four sections contain a whopping seventy-three chapters total, making this a book of some girth, although the chapters are short and range from scholarly investigations to chapters more reflective and personal in nature. It is therefore less a book to be consumed from front to back and more of the kind that one can leisurely enjoy in small bites.
Perhaps the most striking aspect is the number of entries dedicated to foods of an industrial nature. The selections remind me of Lucy Long’s 2007 article, “Green Bean Casserole and Midwestern Identity,” in which she argues that green bean casserole (consisting of canned green beans, cream of mushroom soup, and canned fried onions) could be described as a regional food, evidencing a Midwestern aesthetic preference for high calorie, high salt, industrialized foods. Not only is green bean casserole quite popular in Utah, but another dish found in the book called “Hawaiian Haystacks” is arguably similar, consisting of rice, chicken, canned gravy, cheese, fried chow mein noodles, and canned pineapple. The similarity of aesthetic preferences is not surprising given that Mormons emigrated from Missouri and have a similar industrial agricultural background to the Midwestern one that Long describes.
Long also notes the Midwestern aesthetic as being economical, functional, and easy, which are latent criteria found throughout the entries. Latter-Day Saints are known for large families and church gatherings in which economical, functional, and easy-to-prepare foods play a large role. Green Jell-O is one of the many entries that fall in this category. So much Jell-O is consumed in Utah that it was named the official snack of Utah before the 2002 Olympics and featured on Olympic commemorative pins. One of the best undergraduate papers I ever read researched Jell-O foodways and concluded that Jell-O dishes were popular because they were cheap, sugary, fed lots of people, and appealed to children. The student wrote that if no one wanted to eat it, you could always put blue Jell-O in a plastic baggie along with some Goldfish crackers. Children could pretend the fish were in the ocean by squishing them around in the plastic baggie, providing hours of entertainment. Functional indeed!
Other examples of chapters addressing foods with an industrial bent include the pastrami burger, associated with the Crown Burger food chain; an entry on the first KFC franchise, which apparently originated in Utah; unusually thick shakes (you can’t suck them through a straw) associated with Arctic Circle and Iceberg Drive-ins; two chapters dedicated to “fresh-mex” Costa Vida and Café Rio chain restaurants; and a lovely entry by Spencer Green on the popularity of dirty sodas that was featured in The New York Times. A dirty soda is a mixture of other sodas with added flavorings or syrups. Given this traditional bent towards the industrial, it therefore is not surprising that Utah County is apocryphally known as having the highest concentration of restaurant chains in the country.
The industrial bent is closely connected to traditional non-industrial concerns with large home gardens, food storage, and food preservation—if one is concerned about food preservation and food safety, industry comes into play. The LDS church encourages Saints to store enough food to sustain themselves for an entire year, and so food storage and the kinds of food that store well shape LDS foodways. There are chapters on food cellars, root storage, home gardens, and putting up, as well as agricultural traditions such as fruit production and hunting and fishing. There are also several entries on drink. Utah is known for its strict alcohol laws and the lack of consumption of coffee and tea (hence, the popularity of soda and sugar generally). A number of excellent entries delve into this complex history, including historical entries on nineteenth-century breweries and winemaking.
Attention also is given to Indigenous, ethnic, and immigrant foodways, although less prominently. There is a chapter on traditional Western Shoshone foods by Patty Timbimboo-Madsen and one on Navajo mutton stew that unsurprisingly mostly discusses the raising of sheep and only lastly the stew (cf. Worth and Adair [1972] 1997); it also includes the recipe. Other entries include one on Italian foodways, complemented by another that explores a family tradition of making ravioli for Thanksgiving. Others address Asian foodways and ethnic restaurants generally; Japanese Nikkei Senior Center Luncheons; Greek foods; and refugee foodways.
I have sampled only a few of the entrees here, but as a whole This Is the Plate is a worthy addition to any folklorist’s shelf. It also would make a lovely gift or conversational piece as a coffee-table book, since it is quite accessible to non-academics and includes a number of excellent photographs, along with recipes. The coverage may be a touch esoteric for those unfamiliar with Utah’s history and culture, but overall, it is an excellent book that provides a wealth of information that is probably best digested over time. It is lovely to have a book in which, when one has a spare five minutes, one can learn about why entries such as “candy” or “salt” might be included (the Great Salt Lake at one point was mined for salt and is considered an “official” food). This Is the Plate will be especially useful for those interested in regional foodways, the history and culture of Utah, and questions of how and why foods become traditional and meaningful for reasons other than the strictly gastronomic.
Long, Lucy. 2007. “Green Bean Casserole and Midwestern Identity: A Regional Foodways Aesthetic and Ethos,” Midwestern Folklore 33: 29–44.
Worth, Sol, and John Adair. [1972] 1997. Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film Communication and Anthropology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
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[Review length: 1309 words • Review posted on December 10, 2022]