It's understandable that tourists want to visit Temple Square. When it comes to icons, the Salt Lake Temple is to Utah what the Alamo is to Texas. The tone of the state flows outward from a single, revered edifice.

So tourists come to Temple Square to get an idea about Mormons. They're disappointed if they expect to see people in Amish dress, horse-drawn buggies, and a string of roped-together wives towed along by a gruff, clod-hopping patriarch.

Instead, they get fountains, groomed lawns, polite missionaries, and maybe some pamphlets. If they're lucky, some loon ranting about us on a street corner provides a floor show.

By then they're hungry. And what better way to do lunch then by sampling traditional Mormon cuisine over at the Lion House? Except that there isn't any of that either.

Spare me the e-mail about Jell-O and "funeral" potatoes. Iowa beat Utah for the national Jell-O consumption title back in 1997. Come to think of it, they also beat us across Iowa when we fled Illinois 150 years before that.

We're a relatively new church. Lutherans were doing "funeral" potatoes long before we got them. That's just one example of how most foods viewed as traditional Mormon fare were, in fact, borrowed from the faiths and cultures of those we converted.

Food singular to the Mormon faith is pioneer food, what we lived on when we first came to Utah. It's a meager fare that only a people with serious moral reservations against cannibalism would eat. You won't find it on the menu at the Lion House.

You also won't find Mormon tea anywhere. The pioneers boiled it from an ephedra plant. Supposedly it gave them a slight but badly needed buzz. If you think this place is boring now, imagine it without diet Coke.

One of my great-great-grandfathers reportedly fed his entire family (two wives, assorted kids) for a week on a woodchuck he ran over with a wagon. They gave thanks to the Lord and boiled it.

"Lumpy dick," originally from England, sounds horrible, but was actually a popular but remedial pudding made from boiling water, flour, a pinch of salt, milk, and a little sugar.

Sego Lily bulbs reportedly saved the early Mormon pioneers from starvation. It's the state flower now, so don't try eating it - that's if you can even find it.

During the first winter in the valley, pioneers were reduced to consuming rawhide. Eat a casserole made from the front seat of a Lexus and I'll bet you won't complain about funeral potatoes ever again.

In my great-grandma's journal is a mention of "measle jelly." If this was a delicacy rather than a potion, I hope it helped them keep the woodchuck down. Mercifully, the recipe was lost.

Be happy none of the traditional Mormon food survived. When you get to the Lion House, order the special. I'm pretty sure it isn't made with real lion anymore.

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rkirby@sltrib.com