How Georgia became the first state to define its culinary culture

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 fe