“If a picture can paint a thousand words, recipes can tell a thousand stories,” says Kay Fenton Smith. It’s a truth she endearingly illustrates throughout her new book, Baking Blue Ribbons: Stories and Recipes from the Iowa State Fair Food Competitions.

A few years ago, Smith, a passionate cook and avid State Fair enthusiast with a professional background in marketing, was surprised that while there are many great books about the Iowa State Fair and cookbooks with State Fair recipes, no one had ever told the history of the fair’s food department and competitions.

“Here we were, the No. 1 state fair food competition in the nation,” Smith says. “Why wasn’t there a book about it?”

So she decided to write one.

For help, she teamed up with Carol McGarvey, who worked for the Des Moines Register for 33 years as a features reporter on the food, gardening and home beats.  Each August, she reported on the food competitions at the fair. She also has served as a State Fair food judge for 36 years and counting.

Together, the duo dug deeply into the archives of the State Fair’s Blue Ribbon Foundation, read through hundreds of pages of Iowa newspapers, and spoke with dozens of judges and ribbon-winners and their descendants to uncover the history, recipes and stories of “Iowa’s greatest treasure in food.”

The resulting tome brings more than 150 recipes that will get avid cooks rushing to the kitchen. But first they’ll have to tear themselves away from the compelling stories that each recipe tells, not only of the talented prizewinner who crafted it but also of bygone days and of the 168-year history of the competitions themselves.

It starts with the first fair in 1854, when the event’s largest cheese (400 pounds) was presented to the Honorable J.W. Grimes, Iowa’s governor-elect, and awards were given, by male judges, based on how foods looked (actual tasting didn’t happen until the 1900s).

Organized by decades and illustrated with vintage photos, newspaper articles and food advertisements, the book’s stories and recipes highlight not only winners from the competitions, but also food trends from each era. In the 1890s Bertha Palmer (of Chicago’s famed Palmer House Hotel), dreamed up a nice little goodie for ladies’ picnics: She had her pastry chef develop a recipe for baking thick chocolaty cookies in a shallow tin and cutting them into squares. Hence, the brownie was born.

In 1911, Crisco burst onto the scene, and soon after, an ad proclaimed that the “only good reason why a woman should use lard … is because she has not heard of Crisco.” Pistachio pudding was an “it” ingredient of the 1970s, making its way into the trendy Watergate Cake, with its “Coverup” frosting. The 1990s saw “a wave of Cooking Lite and Healthy events with low-sodium and low-fat classes.”

The authors also recount the ways in which visionary food superintendents brought changes that, over time, transformed the competitions into the seamlessly run juggernaut they are today.

An overarching takeaway throughout the pages is the pride, dedication and talent of the contestants—and how passionate they were about bringing beautiful food to the fair, in spite of the challenges in their lives. In 1946, for example, when the fair reopened after being shuttered during World War II, contestants saved their butter and sugar rations throughout the year so that they would have enough for the competitions come August.

Yet for all the rich stories of talented cooks in days gone by, the book is not just a nostalgia trip. The food competitions remain a living, breathing, thriving thing. The 2000s saw Denny and Candy Elwell of Ankeny donating $1 million to expand and remodel the former tourism building into the open, airy and modern Margaret and James “Bud” Elwell Family Food Center. In recent years, the annual number of contestants has grown to more than 10,000, with prize purses topping $75,000.

“We’ve told of the history, but this book is also about the future,” Smith says. “It’s really about how people continue to cook and bake for all different reasons.” She encourages everyone to enter. “Even if you don’t cook a lot, if you cook something that you’re proud of, there’s room for it at the fair. If you make it to the sign-in table, you’ve already won.”

From an article appearing in DSM July/August 2022: Taking the Cake:  With recipes and stories from 1854 to today, a new book recounts the history of the Iowa State Fair food competitions.  Written by Wini Moranville.