An Evening with Toni Tipton-Martin: 50 Years of The Taste of Country Cooking

Join us as we welcome back three-time James Beard Award–winning food journalist, culinary historian, editor, and cookbook author Toni Tipton-Martin for a deep dive into one of the most significant works in American cooking: Edna Lewis's The Taste of Country Cooking.

The newly published 50th-anniversary edition of Lewis's classic features a new foreword by Tipton-Martin. Together, we'll explore the enduring impact of Lewis and celebrate her seminal work - and consider where Southern cooking stands today, in a post–Nashville hot chicken landscape.

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 proudly announced 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, in its pages Miss Lewis (as she was almost universally known) extols 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, this remains the definitive book on Southern cooking.