U.S. food

Take a look at this from the Food Timeline FAQs: state foods. Has resources both online & cookbooks. Lists some (but not all) official foods. (Most states have not designated a state food or recipe.) Also has a "A selected list of traditional state foods."

if they do not massachusetts should have these 2 items listed.. along the coast fried clams and statewide cranberry sauce

Massachusetts has a bunch of them.

State fruit----Cranberry
State muffin----Corn muffin
State bean---Baked navy bean
State dessert---Boston cream pie
State cookie---Chocolate chip cookie
State doughnut---Boston cream doughnut

On the other hand, Jell-O is the official snack food of Utah. Blue crabs, not lobster, are the stet food of Maine. Ohio has a bunch of "state meals," including chicken fried steak. The official state meal of Oklahoma is "Fried okra, squash, cornbread, barbecue pork, biscuits, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken fried steak, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas."

According ot the NY times, an Arizona restaurant "has started a petition drive to lobby the Legislature to officially adopt the chimichanga [as the state food], as lawmakers have done for the bolo tie (official neckwear), the saguaro blossom (official flower) and the Colt revolver (official firearm)."

Sheila Hibbens's The National Cookbook in the 1930s was the first such cookbook that I know of. The Time-Life volume on American food from the 1970s wasn't bad, but wasn't thorough. I've got an American Heritage cookbook from the 1970s that to tell you the truth I have hardly ever opened. Might be OK.

Neither was arranged by state, though. That wouldn't make any sense. It would be like a French cookbook arranged by departments. Culinary regions don't often align with state boundaries. You'll find low county cooking in coastal Georgia, South Carolina, and southern North Carolina, but not in the mountainous areas of any of those states, for example.

I really can't think of any recent cookbook that tries to cover all of US cooking but only US cooking. It would be hard to do. The recipes for moose and cutthroat trout that you'd have to have for Alaska would be no good for cooks in New Orleans, South Carolina, Florida, or New Mexico, and conversely Alaskan cooks might have trouble finding file powder, benne seeds, key limes, or panocha flour.

"State foods" (or muffins, desserts, etc.) are generally designated through a political process. Sometimes it's cute--Mrs. Smith's 5th grade class writes to their legislators recommending the meadow muffin for the state something-or-other, and the legislators obligingly set the wheels of law-making into motion. Sometimes it's a lobbyists' game--the state parsnip growers decide to push for designation of their product as the Official State Root Vegetable and the legislature goes ahead with it. It's not always a true reflection of local cuisine.

I used to buy a community cookbook (spiral-bound, fundraiser for schools, churches or hospitals) from somewhere in each state as we travelled and have enjoyed trying recipes as cooked by the locals for ingredients that get transported up here to Minnesota.

I own volume 1 and 2 of The American Country Inn and Bed & Breakfast Cookbook which features a few recipes from each state, and is organized by state. Excellent recipes, mostly for breakfasts and a few for other meals. Maybe something like that would be of interest to you? http://www.amazon.com/American-Country-Breakfast-Cookbook-Vol/dp/1558530649

But Vinny is right about regional cooking, even within a state. A recent cookbook one of my friends co-authored emphasizes that - Minnesota Lunch: From Pasties to Banh Mi
http://mnsandwiches.wordpress.com/about/

Hey, at least my state has a stye of cuisine named after it--California Cuisine. I can think of only one other cuisine that has a state name and that's Tex-Mex.

New Mexico definitely has its own cuisine. Reflected in the Official State Question: Red or green?

But as I said, in general a state will be just part of one or two or three regions. I'm in the region of Chesapeake Bay cuisine, but so are Washington, DC and parts of Virginia. And not all of Maryland is in that region. After New Mexico adopted its Official State Question, a columnist here asked for suggestions for a Maryland equivalent. The winner was "Are you saving the claws for soup?" It never gained Official status, perhaps because legislators from the mountains would have asked "What the hell does that mean?"

And, conceding that the plural of anecdote is not data, I don't really notice a distinct cuisine in California the way I do in Charleston or New Orleans or Santa Fe.

What I was thinking of is a cuisine where the name of the cuisine includes a state (or Region) and the name itself is well known. Something that woulds work for ,say, a one line description of a restaurant in a guidebook.

House of Edibles, 123 Main St--German (or French, Italian, Scandinavian, Chinese, California, Tex Mex...)

I don't see "New Mexico" being well known enough that most readers (even American readers) would know what kind of foods a restaurant would offer, in the same way they probably would know Tex Mex.

No, you don't notice a distinct cuisine in California. "California cuisine" is not the same thing as "cuisine of California." California cuisine is a distinct style of preparing and serving food, just as French cuisine or Chinese cuisine are. Wikipedia says:

California cuisine is a style of cuisine marked by an interest in fusion cuisine (integrating disparate cooking styles and ingredients) and in the use of freshly prepared local ingredients. The food is typically prepared with strong attention to presentation. The term California cuisine arose as a result of culinary movements in the last decades and should not be confused with the traditional foods of California.

Alice Waters, the proprietor of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, has contributed significantly to the concept of California Cuisine.