The Taste of Country Cooking

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.

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.

• Publisher: Knopf
  
• Publish Date: May 05, 2026
  
• Pages: 304
• Language: English
  
• Type: Hardcover
  
• EAN/UPC: 9780593804957
  
• Dimensions: 9.0 X 7.0 X 0.0 inches | 1.3 pounds
  
• BISAC Categories: Cooking & Wine