Nov. 18, 1913, was a grand day in the history of Georgia agriculture and gastronomy. It marked the date of the Georgia Products Feasts, when 75 towns and cities across the state staged sumptuous dinners that reflected each area’s food and dishes.
Those feasts are the starting point for “Taste the State Georgia: Distinctive Foods and Stories From Where Eating Local Began” (University of South Carolina Press, $37.99) by Kevin Mitchell and David S. Shields. Those one-night-only dining affairs, they write in the book’s preface, posited Georgia as “the first state in the United States that made a concerted effort to define its distinctive culinary culture.”
The 1913 repasts were championed by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, which “challenged the state’s hotels and counties to hold dinners featuring local products and preparations,” the book says.
The chamber’s advocacy of “food from here” was prompted by what it deemed an “invasion of nonlocal products,” explain the authors, who note that the first decade of the 20th century saw Southern grocery stores stock canned goods, processed foods and packaged grains from national suppliers, especially companies in the Northern and Western regions of the U.S.
Local leaders enthusiastically took up the Georgia-grown banner, galvanizing organizers to develop menus built not just around products exclusively grown in the state but from their own counties. Coordinators of the banquet in Byromville in Middle Georgia one-upped everyone by securing all their foodstuffs from a single farm in Dooly County.
Credit: James Kibler
Credit: James Kibler
Through rigorous archival digging, Shields (a food historian and professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina) and Mitchell (a food historian and chef-instructor at the Culinary Institute of Charleston) tracked down the menus for these feasts, many of which were advertised in local newspapers, including The Atlanta Constitution.
Their research led them to realize that the menus offered insight into the foods that residents deemed emblematic of the Peach State as well as their own microcosm, Shields said.
“I realized that here’s a situation where we don’t define the 65 ingredients that matter,” he said of how he and Mitchell determined which foods to feature in their book. “The people themselves define what is important, in terms of Georgia cuisine, and we just take the findings as an agenda to do research.”
Similar to their 2021 book “Taste the State South Carolina,” this latest work takes readers down a delicious historical rabbit hole in a discussion of dishes and ingredients associated with Georgia. There also are old recipes and modernized dishes developed by Mitchell, as well as reprinted menus from that storied Nov. 18 night of feasting.
Credit: Elizabeth Ervin
Credit: Elizabeth Ervin
Starting with apples and ending with Vidalia onions, the book “shows how and why Georgia food matters, both as a kind of Southern cookery and as American cuisine,” they write. “It charts how Native American, European and African food cultures mingled to form something distinctive and compelling.”
The authors devote some space to “lost items” — foods that once were central, but which became “either functionally extinct or passed out of fashion.”
“Georgia was famous as a place that originated the greatest sweet potatoes, which they called yams,” said Shields, who described the old sugar yam as “wonderfully sumptuous.”
“It wept sugar” when you baked it, he said, lamenting the variety’s demise. “That has gone with the wind.”
No book on Georgia’s food would be complete without discussion of the fruit that gives the state its nickname.
“The big story, of course, is how Georgia lost its primacy as the Peach State,” Shields said. “All of these farmers decided to go into peach growing in the late ’20s. They’re buying up land, they plant the groves, and, of course, they produce a market glut. Price of peaches goes down. They bought all the land on credit.”
Then the Great Depression hit and “over half of the peach growers in Georgia get wiped out and you have derelict orchards,” Shields said. “The price rises again and farmers over in South Carolina are looking, and they see there’s some practices about the Georgia peach that are truly excellent. (They say) ‘Let’s do that and let’s avoid the debt.’ That’s how come South Carolina — and now California — grow more peaches than Georgia — because of dumb debt.”
Georgia still can lay claim to some peach fame, however. “Georgia remains the Peach State to the extent that the greatest Eastern peaches are bred here,” Shields said, crediting now retired Dick Okie of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Southeastern Fruit & Tree Nut Research Station in Byron for creating the entire line of prince peach varieties.
Okie was “the man who kept Georgia the Peach State,” Shields said, quipping that “there should be a statue with a peach in his hand. The only rival to him as a peach breeder was the Californian Floyd Zaiger, who created all the great white peaches.”
Readers who eat up food stories like these can look for more from Mitchell and Shields. The authors will discuss their book at the Atlanta History Center Aug. 19. And they are filming a Southern travelogue/cooking series called “Savors of Flavor” that will air on PBS in May 2026.
The next volume in their “Taste the State” series also is in the works: an exploration of the edibles of Tennessee.
Author appearance
7 p.m. Aug. 19. Chef Kevin Mitchell and David S. Shields in conversation. $6 members, $12 nonmembers. Atlanta History Center, 130 W. Paces Ferry Road NW, Atlanta. 404-814-4000, atlantahistorycenter.com
RECIPES
“Taste the State Georgia” includes more than a dozen original recipes from co-author and chef Kevin Mitchell, including collard green and cabbage slaw, shrimp and crab fritters, and bourbon and Cherry Coca-Cola cake.
There are some dishes that were “close to my heart, based on things that I remember eating,” Mitchell said, recalling that his grandmother started teaching him to cook when he was 6 years old. Other recipes, he said, were ones that “I just wanted to try.”
Credit: Rhonda Mitchell
Credit: Rhonda Mitchell
Collard green and cabbage slaw
Mitchell developed this coleslaw to accompany fried fish. In “Taste the State Georgia,” he points out that the typical slaw pairing for fried fish features cabbage and carrot in a mayo-based dressing.
His deviation includes collards for their “slight bitterness and crunch” as a counterpoint to the sweetness of carrots and cabbage, as well as an oil-and-vinegar dressing amped up with Creole mustard and smoked paprika.
Be sure to massage the raw collards for the entire 5 minutes to tenderize them.
- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
- 5 cups collard greens with thick stems removed, leaves halved lengthwise and cut crosswise into 1/4-inch strips
- 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/2 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon Creole mustard
- 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
- 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
- salt, to taste
- freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 3 cups green cabbage, cored, cut in half, then cut into thin slices
- 2 cups shaved carrots (using a vegetable peeler)
- 1/2 small Vidalia onion, thinly sliced
- Mix the oil and collard greens in a stainless-steel bowl and massage with your hands for approximately 5 minutes.
- Make the dressing: Whisk together the vinegar, lemon juice, sugar, mustard, celery seed and paprika in a small bowl. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Combine the collard greens, cabbage, carrots and onion in a very large bowl. Add the dressing, stirring to coat well, and season generously with salt and pepper. Refrigerate until the collard greens soften and wilt slightly, stirring occasionally, for at least 1 hour and up to 3 hours.
Serves 4 to 6.
Per serving, based on 4: 112 calories (percent of calories from fat, 32), 3 grams protein, 16 grams carbohydrates, 8 grams total sugars, 5 grams fiber, 4 grams total fat (1 gram saturated), no cholesterol, 373 milligrams sodium.
Credit: Rhonda Mitchell
Credit: Rhonda Mitchell
Shrimp and crab fritters
Shrimp and blue crab meat are staples in Mitchell’s home in Charleston, South Carolina. His wife, Rhonda, is especially fond of blue crab. “It’s a ritual for her. Every Tuesday, she would want to have blue crab,” he said.
Mitchell said he likes this fritter recipe because it “uses up two beautiful types of seafood” and hits the mark for spice and smoke. “When I make them, I can’t keep them in the house,” he added.
- 3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1 egg
- 6 tablespoons water
- 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
- 1 1/2 pounds shrimp, chopped
- 6 ounces lump crabmeat
- 1/2 cup yellow onion, minced
- vegetable oil for frying
- dipping sauce, such as cocktail, remoulade, creole remoulade or tartar sauce (optional)
- Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, smoked paprika and cayenne pepper in a bowl. Add the egg, water and parsley and whisk together. Add the shrimp, crabmeat and onion. Mix until the batter is fully combined.
- Heat the oil in a deep fryer to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with paper towels.
- Using an ice cream scoop, drop a few balls of batter at a time into the hot oil. Watch out for splattering. Cook for about 8 minutes, or until golden, turning halfway through. Drain on a paper towel. Let cool for 5 minutes.
- Serve with your favorite dipping sauce (e.g., cocktail, remoulade, creole remoulade, tartar sauce).
Makes about 30 (1-ounce) fritters.
Per fritter: 68 calories (percent of calories from fat, 53), 5 grams protein, 3 grams carbohydrates, trace total sugars, trace fiber, 4 grams total fat (1 gram saturated), 36 milligrams cholesterol, 395 milligrams sodium.
Credit: Dianne Wade
Credit: Dianne Wade
Bourbon and Cherry Coca-Cola cake
“I have a really bad sweet tooth,” Mitchell said. Among his dessert cravings: soft drink cakes. He grew up on cakes made with 7UP and Sprite but developed this recipe as a nod to the South. The inspiration came from his enjoyment of sipping bourbon and Cherry Coca-Cola, a flavor combination he thought would bode well in a cake.
For this particular recipe, he reached for Uncle Nearest whiskey.
For the cake:
- 1/2 cup Cherry Coca-Cola
- 1/2 cup ginger beer
- 2 tablespoons good-quality whiskey or bourbon
- 16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cubed
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 cup chopped cherries
For the icing:
- 14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) unsalted butter
- 1/4 cup Cherry Coca-Cola
- 1/4 cup ginger beer
- 1/4 cup good-quality whiskey or bourbon
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
- Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9-by-13-by-2-inch cake pan with baking spray.
- Make the cake: Pour the cola, ginger beer and whiskey into a large saucepan and add the butter and the cocoa powder. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently until the butter is melted and the mixture is smooth. Remove from the heat.
- Whisk the flour, light brown sugar and granulated sugar, baking soda and salt in a large bowl until well-combined. Stir the cola mixture into the dry ingredients until thoroughly blended and smooth.
- Put the sour cream into a 2-cup jug or liquid measuring cup, then break in the eggs and add the vanilla. Beat the eggs with the sour cream and vanilla, then add this to the batter and stir until thoroughly combined. Stir in cherries.
- Spread the batter into the prepared pan in an even layer to the corners. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Make the icing while the cake is in the oven. In a 2-quart saucepan, melt the butter with the cola, ginger beer, whiskey and cocoa powder over medium heat, stirring until combined. Beat in the powdered sugar, about a cup at a time, until the icing is smooth and combined.
- Take the cake from the oven and pour the icing over it, covering as much cake as possible. Tilt the cake pan or use an offset spatula to cover the entire surface, working quickly before the icing begins to set. Leave the cake to cool in its pan. The cake can be made up to 2 days ahead and kept covered in a cool place.
Serves 15.
Per serving: 508 calories (percent of calories from fat, 45), 4 grams protein, 67 grams carbohydrates, 52 grams total sugars, 2 grams fiber, 25 grams total fat (15 grams saturated), 89 milligrams cholesterol, 183 milligrams sodium.
Recipes from “Taste the State Georgia: Distinctive Foods and Stories From Where Eating Local Began” by Kevin Mitchell and David S. Shields (The University of South Carolina Press, 2025). Recipes by Kevin Mitchell reprinted with permission.
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