Signature Dishes of America: Recipes and Culinary Treasures from Historic Hotels and Restaurants

by Sherry Monahan

America’s chefs and cooks have reveled in serving meals to their customers since this country’s early beginnings, creating their own recipes based on available ingredients, creativity, or at the request of others. Some took humble home recipes and made them into their signature specialties, many of which have become synonymous with certain hotels and restaurants in America. These culinary treasures are household names, but their true origin has slipped back into history. Signature Dishes of America captures nearly 100 of these well-known dishes and their origins. Foods like Eggs Benedict, Green Goddess Dressing, and Hot Browns were created decades ago and remain mainstays in our culinary world today. Discover the story behind Los Angeles’ Brown Derby’s Cobb Salad, whose recipe was created by a hungry owner, or how an old pie recipe discovered in an antique drawer became a favorite at the Golden Lamb restaurant. This collection of recipes and their background is a tasty way to share American food history and culture.

248 pages, Hardcover

Published October 3, 2023

About the author

Sherry Monahan a.k.a. S.A. Monahan


Sherry became enchanted with food at a young age. Her paternal grandfather was cook at a lumber camp and her father and aunts and uncles loved to cook. She studied Home Economics in middle school and fell in love. When her modeling career didn’t take off, she turned back to cooking and studied restaurant management. She didn’t want to spend 100-120 hours per week in the kitchen, so she fuels her food passion by writing about it. She also has a love of good wine, some beer, and cocktails. She enjoys visiting wineries and distilleries and discovering new labels. Her creative cooking skills produce some tasty meals, but it also lends itself to mixing drinks. She loves trying old classics and concocting new ones.

She began her writing career when she combined her passion for food, travel, and history. She penned her first book, Taste of Tombstone, in 1998. That same passion landed her a monthly magazine column in 2009 when she began writing her food column in True West entitled, Frontier Fare.

Sherry is a culinary historian who enjoys researching the genealogy of food and spirits. While there’s still plenty to explore about frontier food, she’s expanding her culinary repertoire to include places and foods from all over America and beyond.

She holds memberships in the James Beard Foundation, the Author’s Guild, Single Action Shooting Society, and the Wild West History Association. She is the past president of Western Writers of America (2014-2016), a professional genealogist, an honorary Dodge City marshal, and a member of the Most Intrepid Western Author Posse.

Reviews

[Theediscerning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now, I tend to much prefer cookbooks that just give us the least kind of waffle and more of, well, the waffles, for want of a better example. So bear that in mind when I say this starts with two brief pages of introduction and prelude, and then two pages of dense text about eggs Benedict. Yes, this is designed to collate all the fashionably famous dishes associated with specific places and creative cooks across the US, and so we're not just getting the recipe. Oh no, we're getting all the bare bones first, of who and how and what and where and when and why.

Well, as far as we know. We're not with the second breakfast option before we've seen the problems of pinning this down – the eggs Benedict story not being as clear-cut as some would like. Other times we really play fast and loose with the definition of famous, or so it seems to this Brit, but nothing here really sticks out as a waste of space. The book is fine, but not always for beginners – I have no idea what 'spoon bread' even is, and there is no picture whatsoever to guide me to an expectation. A lamb bolognese takes hours – so long that people fall asleep and so the edition I saw didn't tell you when to put the herbs in. It seems to think we're in a catering kitchen when we're not, as soups and enchiladas come in quantities for ten servings. All in all it seemed a suitable novelty, a kind of trivia book – a volume where nothing is trivial, but you can stumble across anything and everything without knowing you were ever looking for it. Chinese melon soup offers some interest; a chicken a la cacciatore doesn't really surprise, and can't surely be as exotic as it once was. It's a blend of typical-seeming dishes, all best represented by one eatery, and one half-known-of kitchen. And despite a couple of issues I can't see many reasons why you should dismiss it from yours.

After all, we all ought to know that the echt Waldorf salad had never been near a walnut…

[Rebecca Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a total foodie - and these dishes are some of the best that you can put on your table. I have enjoyed trying several of these, and plan to try even more. My family was impressed.

Fall in love with your food again!