In this post, we pay homage to “The Grand Dame of Southern Cooking,” chef and author, Edna Lewis. Before the terms “farm-to table” and “eating seasonally” became a part of today’s culinary conversation, Miss Lewis, as she was often called, practiced the art of gathering fresh ingredients to create simple, yet elegant fare. Her wisdom, which influenced renowned chefs as well as home cooks worldwide, continues to inspire many today. Let’s take a look at the life and legacy of this culinary icon.

Foundations

I grew up among people who worked together, traded seed, borrowed setting hens if their own were late setting. Early hatched chickens were like a prize. Neighbors would compete to see who would serve the first spring chickens pan-sautéed. The first spring greens, lettuce, scallions in a vinegar dressing with salt, pepper, and sugar—no oil. They shared favors of all kinds, joined in when it came to planting or harvesting a crop, wheat threshing, hog butchering, and cutting ice on the ponds to store for the summer in the community icehouse.       —Edna Lewis, “What is Southern?”

Edna Regina Lewis was born on April 13, 1916 in Freetown, Virginia, a farming community founded by her grandfather and a group of freed African Americans shortly after the end of chattel slavery in the United States. In Freetown, the cultivation and preparation of food was not only necessary for survival, but also a source of great pride and joy. Signature dishes stood at the center of many of Freetown's community-wide celebrations such as Emancipation Day, which was celebrated on September 22^nd in recognition of when its founders gained freedom from chattel slavery. One of the traditions of the Emancipation Day celebration was to prepare independently attained foods that were unlike the provisions allotted by slaveholders.

As a child, Edna Lewis spent countless hours being informed by the changing seasons around her while she gathered food for her family’s meals. She also intently watched her mother and aunt cook and sew to care for their family. Her aunt—who could not read or write—had tremendous recall, and a young Edna Lewis absorbed her recipes and cooking methods through careful observation. Lewis’s childhood memories of growing up in Freetown became the essential ingredient to her future success as a chef and author.

Transitions

In 1928, after the death of her father, the teen-aged Lewis left Freetown—moving first to Washington D.C. and then settling in New York City. After finding short-lived domestic work, she became a successful seamstress—creating costumes for celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe. She also worked for the luxury department store Bonwit Teller styling its windows during the Christmas season. With her income, she was able to fund her sister’s art school education.

In her downtime, Lewis hosted dinner parties for friends—a motley crew of artists and intellectuals. Her home-cooked meals showcased the flavors and techniques that she relished from her upbringing in Freetown. In 1948, Lewis partnered with Johnny Nicholson, who had attended her popular dinner parties, to open a restaurant on Manhattan’s East Side. As the restaurant’s inaugural chef, Lewis’s dishes were enjoyed by a diverse clientele of celebrities, authors, bohemians, and socialites of the day including Salvador Dali, William Faulkner, and Truman Capote.

Clementine Paddleford’s review of Café Nicholson in the New York Herald Tribune described the delectable peaks of Lewis’s menu: roast chicken with fresh herbs “brown as autumn chestnuts fresh out of the burr,” a cheese soufflé with “each bite like springtime,” and an irresistible chocolate soufflé “light as a dandelion seed in high wind.” As culinary historian and chef Michael W. Twitty discusses in Edna Lewis: At the Table with an American Original, the cuisine that Lewis created and would become known for was the result of “multiple histories and narratives”—layers and combinations of European, Native American, and African food cultures that existed in Orange County, Virginia.

New Journeys     

During the 1950’s Lewis left Café Nicholson and ventured on a series of endeavors including teaching culinary classes, starting a catering business, and brief ownership of a restaurant in Harlem as well as a pheasant farm in New Jersey.  She also worked as a lecturer at the American Museum of Natural History, where she educated visitors on traditional southern and African foodways.

However, it was Lewis’s work as a caterer and teacher that started her on a journey to becoming the author of several influential cookbooks. In 1972, she authored The Edna Lewis Cookbook with socialite Evangeline Peterson, which led to the publication of Lewis’s classic text, The Taste of Country Cooking, in 1976. Featuring charming illustrations by Louisa Jones Waller, the work was infused with Lewis’s recollections of Freetown, and became the first in a series of works that highlighted her signature recipes and distinctive culinary voice. Two more successful books followed: In Pursuit of Flavor in 1988 and The Gift of Southern Cooking in 2003, co-written with Scott Peacock, her protégé, business partner, and eventually, her caretaker.

 

 

                                                        

Changing Seasons                                

Lewis had found great success as a beloved and respected culinary voice, and her presence increased as she continued to lend her expertise to various venues around the country. In the early 1980s she was the chef at Fearrington House Restaurant in North Carolina and Middleton Place Restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1983, she was among several chefs to participate in “A Night of 100 Dinners,” a fundraiser for The New York Public Library organized by James Beard. An article in the New York Times, provides a glimpse of the menu at Calvin Trillin’s contribution to the event, “A Happy Hour with Good Eats,” which featured: “she-crab soup, Virginia fried chicken and whipped potatoes, turnip greens and red onions, spiced pears, buttermilk biscuits, yeast rolls with strawberry preserves, and individual spoonbread soufflés.” Lewis’s and Trillin’s books were used as place cards for guests. In 1985, Lewis joined a host of chefs in a gala held at New York City’s Rockerfeller Plaza in honor of James Beard. The proceeds supported Citymeals on Wheels, an organization which assisted New York City’s elderly population.

 Reviews of Lewis’s books, her recipes, and stories about her life appeared in newspapers around the nation. Her work was often featured in Libby Clark’s “Food for Thought” column in the Los Angeles Sentinel and in New York newspapers such as the New York Amsterdam News and the New York Times. The Taste of Country Cooking was among several selections offered by The Black Book Club mail order service as advertised in Norfolk’s New Journal and Guide.  Her expertise was regularly sought after for articles in Essence , a publication to which Lewis often contributed, as well as Ladies Home Journal and Woman’s Day. In 1990, the New York Times article, “To Eat a Church Supper Is to Want to Cry 'Amen'”, documented Lewis’s visit to her hometown to cook for a reunion of Bethel Baptist Church, the church which her grandfather helped to establish.

All the while, Lewis’s sagacity was sought in renowned kitchens throughout the country. At the age of 72, she returned to New York City to lend her expertise at Brooklyn’s Gage & Tollner, a historic New York City restaurant established in the late nineteenth century. Although the restaurant was traditionally known for its seafood fare, Lewis added her own flair to the menu by serving southern-inspired dishes in addition to her famous she-crab soup: a rich mixture of butter, milk, heavy cream, crabmeat, and crab roe. The regal Lewis would often be seen walking about the Union Square Green Market shopping for fresh ingredients to create the evening’s fare, elegantly donned in her self-made African batik dresses.

After retiring in the early 1990s, Lewis returned to the South where she helped to start the Society for the Revival and Preservation of Southern Food, the precursor to the Southern Foodways Alliance. She spent her latter days cooking and writing, as she continued to champion the conscious culinary movement that she created.

Edna Lewis died at her home on February 13, 2006 at the age of 89.

Influencing Generations

So many great souls have passed off the scene. The world has changed. We are now faced with picking up the pieces and trying to put them into shape, document them so the present-day young generation can see what southern food was like. The foundation on which it rested was pure ingredients, open-pollinated seed—planted and replanted for generations—natural fertilizers. We grew the seeds of what we ate, we worked with love and care.       —Edna Lewis, “What is Southern?”

Edna Lewis received many accolades and awards during her lifetime including an honorary Ph.D. in Culinary Arts from Johnson & Wales University. She was the inaugural recipient of the “James Beard Living Legend Award”, and was named “Grande Dame” by Les Dames d’Escoffier. Posthumously, in 2012, the Edna Lewis Foundation was established, and a play, Dinner with Edna Lewis, written by Shay Youngblood and performed by Detra Payne, debuted at the 2013 Southern Foodways Symposium. In 2014, Lewis was one of five American chefs whose image appeared on a United States Postal Service stamp.

In 2019, Knopf re-issued In Pursuit of Flavor in recognition of the 30th anniversary of its publication. The forward, written by Mashama Bailey—chef, restaurateur, and author of the forthcoming memoir, Black, White, and The Grey: The Story of an Unexpected Friendship and a Landmark Restaurant, pays tribute to the influence that Lewis had on the careers of chefs who have followed in her footsteps:

I never had the opportunity to meet Miss Lewis, but through her food, I like to think that I’ve never come to know her very well…. I’ve learned what people once had to do in the country to survive. There has been a reemergence of traditional ways and cooking good old-fashioned food in this country, and it started with Miss Lewis many years ago. She was at the forefront then and three decades later, her voice continues to lead the way for chefs young and old in their pursuit of flavor.          —Mashama Bailey, In Pursuit of Flavor
                                                                                                                                                          

Resources

Books:

• Bring Me Some Apples and I'll Make You a Pie: A Story about Edna Lewis by Robbin Gourley
• Edna Lewis: At the Table with an American Original edited by Sara B. Franklin
• The Edna Lewis Cookbook by Edna Lewis and Evangeline Peterson
• The Gift of Southern Cooking: Recipes and Revelations from Two Great Southern Cooks by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock
• In Pursuit of Flavor by Edna Lewis with Mary Goodbody; illustrated by Louisa Jones Waller.
• The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis

Articles

• Clark, Libby. "Black History Month Puts Focus on Foremost Cookbook Authors and Food Experts." Los Angeles Sentinel, Feb 02 1995.
• Clark, Libby. "Cookbooks by African American Authors." Los Angeles Sentinel, Dec 10 1998, p. C, 9:1.
• Curtia, James. "A Century of Traditional Black Cookery." Essence 05 1985: 163-5.
• "Edna Lewis." Contemporary Black Biography, vol. 143, Gale, 2018.
• Hamlin, Suzanne. "Loyal to a Long Tradition: Campaign to Save Authentic Southern Cuisine Campaigning to Save Authentic Southern Cuisine." New York Times (1923-Current file), Aug 23 1995, p. 2.  
• Lam, Francis. "What Edna Lewis Knew." New York Times (1923-Current file), Nov 01 2015, p. 10.
• Lewis, Edna. "Great American Cooks." Woman's Day Nov 02 1993: 128,128, 154.
• Lewis, Edna. "The Rewards of Freetown, Va. Life." Afro-American (1893-1988), Aug 07 1976, p. 5.
• "Museum Institutes African Program." New York Amsterdam News (1962-1993), Dec 22 1973, p. 1.  
• By, Enid N. "1,000 Feast at 95 Fetes to Help Library: 1,000 Feast at 95 Parties to Assist the Public Library." New York Times (1923-Current file), Dec 07 1983, p. 2.
• Nash, Jonell. "Soothing Soups." Essence 02 1997: 108,108, 110, 152.
• O'Neill, Molly. "To Eat a Church Supper is to Want to Cry 'Amen': To Eat a Church Supper is to Want to Cry 'Amen'." New York Times (1923-Current file), Aug 15 1990, p. 2.
• Paddleford, Clementine. "New Discovery in Restaurants: Nicholson's, in E. 58th St., Only Seats 30 and has a Standard Menu, but it has Fine Points." New York Herald Tribune (1926-1962), Mar 24 1951, p. 11.
• "What Homecooking Means: 'A Taste of Country'...” New York Amsterdam News (1962-1993), Jun 16 1984, p. 14.

Documentaries &  Interviews:

• Culinary Luminaries: Edna Lewis, The New School for Public Engagement
• An Interview with Chef Edna Lewis
• The Splendid Table, Episode 668: Edna Lewis, an American Original

Organizations:

• African American Chefs Hall of Fame
• The Edna Lewis Foundation
• Southern Foodways Alliance

 

Curated by the staff of the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, Dining Across the Diaspora highlights culinary-related resources—from new and notable cookbooks to food histories and memoirs—available at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.