The Taste of Country Cooking - by Edna Lewis (Hardcover)

About the Book

The commemorative 30th-anniversary edition of "The Taste of Country Cooking," a great American classic on Southern food, includes an Introduction from editor Judith Jones about how the book came to be.

Book Synopsis

A stunning 50th anniversary edition of one of the most beloved cookbooks of all time, by "the empress of Southern cooking" (The New Yorker), beautifully repackaged and redesigned, with a new foreword by Toni Tipton-Martin

With the publication of The Taste of Country Cooking, Edna Lewis proclaimed the food of the American South as one of the world's great cuisines. From Baked Virginia Ham and Corn Muffins to Oyster Stew and Lemon Meringue Pie, Miss Lewis (as she was almost universally known) extolled the vir­tues of the good food of her childhood, spent in a Virginia farming community founded by her grandfather and his friends after emancipation. A celebration of eating locally--decades before "farm to table" became common parlance--the book catalogs the joys of cooking with the seasons: the field greens and salads of spring, pan-fried chicken and crushed peaches in summer, baked ham and sweet potatoes for fall, and hearty soups and stews during the cold winter months. An affirmation of a distinctly American way of eating, half a century after its publica­tion, it remains the definitive book on Southern cooking.

Review Quotes

"[A] masterpiece of Southern cuisine . . . widely hailed as one of the most important cookbooks of the 20th century." --Saveur

"[An] indispensable classic of a cookbook. . . . Thanks to this book, a new generation was introduced to the glories of an American tradition . . . of simplicity and purity and sheer deliciousness that is only possible when food tastes like what it is, from a particular place, at a particular point in time." --Alice Waters (from the Foreword)

"Known as the Grande Dame of Southern Cooking, Lewis is responsible for shining a light on Southern cooking as the basis for American cuisine." --Food & Wine

"[A] seminal cookbook." --San Francisco Chronicle

"[A] classic. . . . Revered for the way it shows the simple beauty of food honestly made in the rhythm of the seasons--the now common but at the time nearly forgotten ethos of eating farm-to-table--and for the way it gave a view of Southern food that was refined and nuanced, going beyond grease, greens and grits." --Francis Lam, The New York Times Magazine

"Edna Lewis brought a conviction and honesty to her food that few have touched." --The Splendid Table

"One of the most influential figures in modern Southern cooking. . . . [A Taste of Country Cooking] is celebrated for its focus on the simplicity of Southern food and emphasis of farm-to-table eating." --Kiera Wright-Ruiz, The New York Times

"The empress of Southern cooking." --Helen Rosner, The New Yorker

About the Author

Edna Lewis was born in 1916 in Freetown, Virginia, a farming community founded after the Civil War by freed slaves (among them her grandfather) and for many years lived and cooked in New York City. She was the recipient of numerous awards, including the inaugural James Beard Living Legend and Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) Lifetime Achievement Awards, the Grande Dame des Dames d'Escoffier International, and the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Lifetime Achievement Award. Her books were inducted into the James Beard Foundation Cookbook Hall of Fame, and she was commemorated with a United States Postal Service postage stamp. Miss Lewis was also the author of The Edna Lewis Cookbook, In Pursuit of Flavor, and, with Scott Peacock, The Gift of Southern Cooking. She died in February 2006.