In the South, “dressed” is a way of life: we like to add something special to transform the ordinary into the great. We dress in our best on Sundays. We dress up for fun on Mardi Gras. And we dress a po-boy right – with lettuce, tomatoes and Blue Plate Mayo – because food is our love language. Our new cookbook, Dressed: 100 Years of Blue Plate Mayo and the Foodways of the Gulf South, marks our 100th anniversary, and it is our love letter to the all the Southern families, neighbors, cooks, chefs and grocers who have “dressed” with Blue Plate all these years.
Written like a story of Southern culture by James Beard Award-winning author Cheryl Slocum and beautifully photographed by Lafayette-based Denny Culbert, whose work also appears in the James Beard Award-winning cookbooks Mosquito Supper Club and Cure, Dressed gathers more than 100 recipes from chefs and cooks across Louisiana, the Gulf Coast, and the broader Southeast, alongside favorites from Blue Plate’s own kitchen. Dressed is a portrait of a place that is more special because of how we do food – a place where we don’t just eat to live, we live to gather together and eat.
Dressed celebrates the families, neighbors and cooks who know that even the simplest meal can be something special. From everyday sandwiches to backyard cookouts, Sunday suppers and celebrations that bring everyone home, the collection reflects the traditions we share and the care we put into feeding one another.
New Orleans classics, Gulf Coast seafood and Southern comfort food fill its pages, alongside familiar favorites and a few surprises. Some dishes may remind you of someone who always made them best. Others may become your own tradition. These are recipes made to be passed around, savored and made again, carrying the flavors we love into new memories around the table.
The best part of making this book was the people. We asked chefs, restaurateurs, and home cooks we admire to share a dish that tastes like where they come from. The culinary creations our friends came back with are as varied as the Gulf South itself. Have a look at these highlights – to name just a few:
With more than 100 recipes, picking favorites feels a little like choosing a favorite cousin. A few we keep coming back to:
Flip through our cookbook and you’ll find the moments that happen around the food: crowded kitchens, long tables, second helpings, and the people who keep showing up for each other. Vivid storytelling and food and lifestyle photography capture what Southern kitchens actually feel like, not just what comes out of them.
The book also traces our own story, from our New Orleans beginnings a century ago to our place in pantries across the Southeast. But Blue Plate didn’t invent the po-boy, gumbo with potato salad, or the Sunday supper. Those belong to the people of the Gulf South, and they are the real subject of this book, the families and cooks who welcomed us into their kitchens, their traditions, and their lives.
Why did “Do you want that dressed?” become part of the local language when ordering a po-boy? How did Blue Plate became the Official Mayonnaise of Po-Boys? These questions and more are answered, and you’ll also find some frame-worthy vintage Blue Plate Mayo ads and photos, in the opening pages of Dressed.
You’ll learn how we got started in New Orleans in 1927 with a simple promise – that a jar of mayonnaise should taste just like homemade – and how it took more than a thousand taste tests in real customers’ kitchens to get it right. Our brand name and label were inspired by the Blue Willow china pattern that dressed so many Southern tables, and our first jars of mayo reached shelves the old-fashioned way, with a handful of salesmen leaving them at neighborhood markets. In 1943, in the middle of World War II, we moved production into a gleaming new factory in the Gert Town neighborhood of New Orleans, a beautiful Art Deco building that still stands today as the Blue Plate Artist Lofts, home to local artists. Our 100 years of history are part of the cookbook, because a good story – like good food – is always worth sharing.
Dressed is available for pre-order now, and it arrives on shelves October 15.
We’d love for you to pick it up at your neighborhood bookstore. Local shops are a lot like the kitchens in this book: they hold a community together. If they don’t have it on the shelf, ask them to order it (ISBN 9781971708041).
Pre-order now from:
Starting October 15, you’ll also find it at local retailers and bookstores.