The Dorothy State: The rollicking history of the neon-orange dressing that tastes like home

Dorothy Lynch is a color not found in nature. It's a salad dressing eaten on virtually every other food. Some Nebraskans love it. Other Nebraskans love to hate it. No one else has ever heard of it.

Of the tens of thousands of impoverished Scandinavians who fled crop failures and religious oppression for a fertile and free Nebraska in the late 19th century, probably only two are connected to something in Nebraskans' kitchen today.

In 1913 in Cushing, Danish immigrants Edd and Meda Scott Peterson had one daughter, Dorothy. In 1952, she introduced her own sweet-and-spicy salad dressing at the St....