Tennessee State Foods

Tomato STATUS Tomatoes Official YEAR DESIGNATED 2003 THE FOOD Tomato, Lycopersicon esculentum, is technically a perennial fruit, though it’s typically grown as an annual and eaten as a vegetable. Tomato plants usually have bright, mid-green, narrow, branched leaves and stems covered in silvery hairs. Most tomatoes are oval to round with a smooth, thin, orange-red skin, but some are yellow or green when ripe. Inside, the tomato has soft flesh only a little lighter than its skin with pockets of clear liquid and small, flat beige seeds. Size varies a lot, from thumbnail-sized cherry tomatoes to varieties that weigh over a pound. Tomatoes are an ingredient in sauces, salads, sandwiches, and soups almost worldwide. THE SIGNIFICANCE Tennessee’s climate is particularly suited to tomato growing, so the state consistently produces more tomatoes than any other fruit. Tomato season in Tennessee runs from about the middle of June to the middle of October. Nashville hosts a Tomato Art Festival each August. Stack Cake STATUS Unofficial Stack Cake THE FOOD A stack cake is essentially a stack of oversized cookies layered with apple butter. A modified spice cookie dough that often contains buttermilk, molasses, and spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice is spread in five to eight cake pans, baked, and cooled to create multiple thin layers. Most cooks prefer to make their own apple butter from dried apples cooked soft with sugar and more spices and puréed. The cookies are carefully stacked up with a layer of apple butter between each. The finished cake is usually refrigerated overnight or longer to allow the cookie layers to soften and the flavors to blend. THE SIGNIFICANCE Stack cake is a traditional southern Appalachian dessert that uses simple, readily available ingredients. It’s a fixture at family celebrations in the area, and was long a standard wedding cake for those too poor to buy something fancier. Local stories say that for weddings, neighbors would each bring a layer of cake to be stacked at the bride’s home. -World Trade Press