A potluck table with meatballs, dinner rolls, salad, spaghetti and a jar of Blue Plate mayonnaise

Dressed

A new cookbook celebrating 100 years of Blue Plate Mayo and the Gulf South foodways.

In the Gulf South, “getting dressed” means more than what you put on. It’s how we honor tradition on Sunday, celebrate on Mardi Gras, and show love at the table. And it’s how we order a po-boy, because the little something extra is what makes the ordinary worth sharing.

Dressed: 100 Years of Blue Plate Mayo and the Foodways of the Gulf South shares more than 100 recipes that captures the many, and sometimes surprising, ways cooks rely on Blue Plate Mayonnaise to turn even the simplest dishes into something worth celebrating.

Where to buy

Cornbread in a cast-iron skillet, with butter on the side

What’s inside

Recipes to make your mouth water

With over 100 recipes based on Gulf South classics as well as new twists and modern takes on Cajun and Creole traditions, you are sure to find a recipe to make your mouth water. You will also find special guest recipes from some of our chef friends.

A sample of some favorites

A fried oyster sandwich with bacon, tomato and mayonnaise on toasted bread

In the Gulf South, feeding people well is not a gesture. It’s a way of life.

A smiling woman in a Parkway paper hat at a crowded festival table
A couple dancing to a brass band on a crowded French Quarter street

The story of Gulf South cooking

Dressed pairs vivid storytelling by James Beard Award-winning author Cheryl Slocum with photography by the Gulf South’s own Denny Culbert, whose work also appears in the James Beard Award-winning cookbooks Mosquito Supper Club and Cure. Together with additional photography by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee, they offer a captivating portrait of Southern kitchens and the moments that happen around them, while tracing Blue Plate’s 100-year New Orleans legacy and influence across the Southeast.

Grilled shrimp skewers on a blue and white platter
Hands holding a tomato sandwich over a kitchen sink

Meet the cooks

We asked Gulf South favorites to share their favorite recipes.

Photo credits: Emeril Lagasse: Romney Caruso; Emily Shaya: Emeliy Ferretti; Julie Vaucresson: Shawn Colin; Lucas McKinney: Quit Nguyen; Hannah Jobe: Elliott Metzger

Gloved hands shucking a pile of oysters
Cypress trees draped in moss, reflected in still water at sunrise

About Blue Plate

Blue Plate started in a little warehouse in Gretna in 1927 and soon became a New Orleans fixture, its Art Deco plant on Jefferson Davis Parkway a landmark for decades. For a hundred years since, it has been on the po-boy, in the potato salad and at every table worth pulling a chair up to. Dressed is our love letter to everyone who kept us at the table and kept reaching for us. You brought the party. We brought the mayo.

More about Blue Plate (opens in a new tab)

A vintage half-pint jar of Blue Plate Mayonnaise
The Blue Plate Fine Foods building in New Orleans at night, its neon sign lit

Get dressed

at your favorite book seller

The cookbook open to the Two-Napkin Sandwiches chapter