14 Edna Lewis Recipes for a Real Taste of Country Cooking

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of Edna Lewis in the pantheon of American chefs — especially in the realm of Southern cuisine. Lewis exalted and explained farm-to-table cooking in the regional South, starting in 1972 with The Edna Lewis Cookbook and culminating in 2003 with The Gift of Southern Cooking, her now-classic collaboration with chef Scott Peacock. 

Lewis was a substantial contributor to Food & Wine for a quarter of a century, first gracing the pages in the third-ever issue in 1978 and closing the chapter with an adapted version of her Summer Corn Pudding in the August 2003 issue.

1978: “Edna Lewis: American Cook”

Lewis’s Food & Wine debut was in the July 1978 issue in a profile called “Edna Lewis: American Cook.” In it, she reminisces about her youth in the Virginia hamlet of Freetown — particularly lingering upon the food. “Nobody ever talked about ‘soul food’ in Freetown,” she said not long ago. “I think homesick people who’d come North just made that up.”

The accompanying menu abounded with Orange County Peanut Soup, Steamed Young Okra, and Freetown Game Hens in a Clay Pot, as well as a photo of a lavish, lush tablescape thickly stacked with flowers, vegetables, fish, peanuts, copious fruits, and a smiling Ms. Lewis decked out in a deep red, elephant-printed, Nigerian silk dress at the Museum of Natural History where she worked as a docent, educating young visitors about foods indigenous to Africa. She is clearly in her element.

A separate feature on ice cream making included a bonus recipe from Lewis: Vanilla Ice Cream with Preserved Chestnuts.

1983: “A Memorable Country Menu for Fall”

Lewis’ second Food & Wine showing was in the November 1983 issue with a country menu. “Autumn could have been a sad season in Virginia, with leaves falling and whippoorwills flying south,” she wrote. “But it also brought an end to our heavy work and gave us a time to put up our crops and gather in nature’s bounty — persimmons to make beer, hickory nuts and hazelnuts to add to holiday cakes and cookies.”

“It was, as well, the beginning of hunting season, when the farmers — armed with their guns and a lunch of souse, cheese, sardines and crackers — went after an assortment of game: squirrel, rabbits, and quail,” she continued. “When enough game had been gathered in, we would have it on a special occasion or add it to the holiday buffet. I often think of those memorable times, wishing they could come again. For now, I have selected a menu that represents the best memories of Virginian autumns past.”

That menu included Gratinéed Oysters on the Half Shell, Pan-Fried Quail with Country Ham, Virginia Spoon Bread, Fall Kale with Pork Stock and Red Onion, Oak Leaf Lettuce Salad with Lemon Dressing, Poached Bartlett Pears with Vanilla Custard Sauce, Crispy Sugar Cookies, and Chicory Coffee.

1987: “Cooking with the Masters: Edna Lewis”

Food & Wine devoted the March 1987 issue to “The Charms of Country Cooking” and asked Lewis for her counsel. She did so on the condition that the team, including the story’s author Tina Ujlaki, come to Middleton Place, outside Charleston, South Carolina. At the former plantation turned National Historic Landmark, Lewis — who was working on a book at the time — served as chef consultant for the Middleton Place Restaurant and in collaboration with the Middleton Place Foundation, created a menu that served as both sustenance and education about historically accurate Colonial cooking.

Lewis’ dishes for the feature included Broiled Oysters on the Half Shell with Buttered Crumbs, Hot Turtle Consommé, Asparagus on Toast with Cream Sauce, Roast Duckling with Orange Sauce, Wild Pecan Rice, Vidalia Onions with Creamed Peas, Brandied Figs, Salad of Oak Leaf Lettuce and Chives with Olive Oil and Lemon Dressing, Molded Vanilla Ice Cream with Wild Strawberries, Small Cakes, Cat’s Tongue Cookies, and Strong Coffee With Chicory.

1998: “A Southern Thanksgiving”

Along with Peacock, Lewis crafted a lavish Thanksgiving menu for Food & Wine‘s November 1998 issue with Pole Beans Cooked in Smoky Pork Stock, Roasted Beets in Gingered Syrup, Spicy Collard Greens, Cranberries with Orange Zest and Port, Cloverleaf Rolls, Benne Wafers, Ambrosia, Egg Custard, a Blackberry Cordial, and more recipes below.

“If America were to elect two figures to represent the changing nature of family, then Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock might win by a landslide,” Kate Sekules wrote in the introduction to the Thanksgiving feature.

“The Odd Couple of Southern Cooking was what food writers dubbed Lewis and Peacock in the early ’90s, when they first began appearing as co-chefs. But as they sit together around a Thanksgiving table in New York City, surrounded by their motley family of mentors, sisters, and friends, discrepancies in age, race, and gender melt like lard in a hot skillet. There is nothing odd here, nor are they a couple. In fact they act more like a pair of high school conspirators, cooking up grand schemes — which is, in fact, exactly what these two Atlanta neighbors are doing.”

The life of Edna Lewis

Lewis was born in 1916 in Freetown, Virginia, a farming community founded by people who were formerly enslaved. Though she wasn’t much of a cook growing up, she paid close attention to dishes like liver pudding and hominy, crafted by her aunt Jenny Hailstalk, and took up cooking for and with her friends when she made her way to New York City at the age of 16.

In 1948, one of these friends, John Nicholson, opened Cafe Nicholson on 58th Street in Manhattan — wisely hiring Lewis as the chef. The restaurant drew a glittering clientele including regulars such as Truman Capote, Eleanor Roosevelt, William Faulkner, and Tennessee Williams who lived across the street and along with Marlon Brando, would take Lewis home at night, stopping at bars along the way.

“It was here that Edna first delighted patrons … with her simple but perfectly cooked dishes,” Ujlaki wrote. “The restaurant had only one seating nightly because people came at seven and didn’t leave until they closed the doors.”

By 1952, Lewis had tired of city life and opened a pheasant ranch in New Jersey, only to return to the city four years later to become a highly sought-after private chef. In 1974, while acting as a docent in the African Hall of the American Museum of Natural History, a chance encounter with the editor Judith Jones led to the eventual publishing of The Taste of Country Cooking in 1976. This loving and lyrical culinary chronicle of a year of her youth in Freetown is now widely regarded as one of the most important cookbooks of the 20th century. According to Ujlaki, “Despite Edna’s humbleness and her lack of interest in self‑promotion (she even refused to do a publicity tour), the book was a great success.”

Peacock met his future collaborator and close friend for the first time when she was working as the chef at Gage & Tollner in Brooklyn, then jumped at the chance to serve as her assistant at a fundraising dinner at the American Institute of Wine and Food in Atlanta. Though he was 27 and she was 74, the two became inseparable, researching, writing, cooking, and even living together in Atlanta until her death in 2006.

“I guess there are a lot of obvious differences between us, but there’s a lot alike, too,” the Georgia-born Peacock told The New York Times in 2003. “We’re both loners and we’re both basically shy. We’ve both struggled with depression and we’re both Southern.”

They found communion in the kitchen, and if you sit down with these recipes, you may find yourself filled with the spirit of country cooking — and the soul of the legendary chef who captured it for the ages.