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Papua New GuineaFlavors · St. Louis
Low St. Louis cake with a dense, buttery base and a moist, sticky topping of butter, sugar and eggs, dusted with powdered sugar. Local tradition attributes it to a baker’s mistake in the 1930s.
Traditional sweet from St. Louis, Missouri
Also known as: St. Louis gooey butter cake, gooey cake
Illustrative images. The pictures in this guide are illustrations based on the real place, not photographs, and may differ from it.
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Gooey butter cake — St. Louis, the United States
The gooey butter cake is a low, rectangular-baked cake with two layers: below, a dense, buttery base; above, a moist, almost creamy layer of butter, sugar and eggs — in many home recipes, also cream cheese — that bakes without fully setting. It comes out of the oven with a cracked, golden surface and is dusted with powdered sugar. It’s cut into squares.
The story told in St. Louis speaks of a baker in the city’s south side who, in the 1930s, got the proportions wrong in a cake batter and, not wanting to throw the result away, decided to sell it anyway. Accounts differ about the exact mistake and about the baker, but agree that the cake came out of neighborhood bakeries, many from families of German origin, and became a city treat.
In St. Louis, gooey butter cake is eaten for breakfast with coffee as much as it is for dessert. Bakeries and cafés sell the classic version and flavored variations, and there are home versions made with boxed cake mix and cream cheese, common at family gatherings.
St. Louis, Missouri
A neighborhood bakery cake from St. Louis, locally attributed to a baker in the 1930s.
Flour, butter, sugar, eggs, baking powder; for the topping, butter, sugar, eggs and, in many recipes, cream cheese; powdered sugar on top.
In squares, eaten with the hands or with a fork, at room temperature; served with coffee.
Breakfast, snack or dessert, year-round.
Your questions
It’s a low St. Louis cake with a dense, buttery base and a moist topping of butter, sugar and eggs, dusted with powdered sugar.
St. Louis tradition says a city baker got the proportions wrong in a batter in the 1930s and sold the result. Accounts of the mistake differ.
In St. Louis, both at breakfast with coffee and as a dessert.
Flavors of the United States
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Creamy Charleston soup made with blue crab meat and the female’s roe, which give it an orange color and the dish its name; finished with a little sherry. The version that includes roe is attributed to William Deas, a cook for a local family, in the early 20th century.
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Pastrami sandwich: cured, seasoned and smoked beef, hot-sliced on rye bread with mustard. It’s the sandwich of New York’s Jewish delicatessens.
Buttery New Mexico cookie, traditionally made with lard, scented with anise and rolled in sugar and cinnamon. It has been the state cookie since 1989, the first official state cookie in the United States.
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Beef stew in a sauce of dried chilies, cumin and garlic, in the Texan style, without beans. Chili queens sold it from booths in San Antonio plazas in the 19th century; it has been the official dish of Texas since 1977.
Carne asada burrito with French fries inside, cheese, pico de gallo, sour cream and guacamole. San Diego’s tourism authority presents it as a creation of the city from the 1980s.
Beef barbecue seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic and roasted over oak coals, served with pinquito beans, salsa, toasted bread and salad. The Santa Maria Valley chamber of commerce registered the menu in 1978.
Stew of fish and seafood in a tomato-and-wine broth, created in the 19th century by Italian fishermen, mostly from Genoa, on the San Francisco pier. It is served with bread for dipping into the broth.
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Cuban sandwich made with Cuban bread, roasted pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard, pressed on a griddle. In Tampa it also includes salami. The City Council declared it the city’s signature sandwich in 2012.
Whiskey made in Tennessee with at least 51% corn, filtered through sugar maple charcoal before aging in new toasted oak barrels. A 2013 state law defines what may use that name.
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