In these days of Food Network stars, millions of Americans who don’t think of themselves as gourmets know the names of celebrity chefs like Anthony Bourdain or Emeril Lagasse. But few Americans, and even few African-Americans, have heard of Edna Lewis. Yet today many leading chefs and food writers credit Lewis as a founder of American cuisine, and especially one of the leading voices of Southern cooking.

Lewis was born in Freetown, Virginia, a granddaughter of former slaves, according to the New York Times. Edna’s sister Ruth Lewis Smith, now 91 years old yet still raising chickens and quail, credits their mother for inspiring the sisters as cooks. She notes that elite whites in Virginia modeled their cuisine on French cooking, and so African-American women who cooked for white masters brought the techniques to bear with their local ingredients at home.

At a time when much of the country was moving towards fast food and convenience in dining, Lewis was championing values around local production, eating close to the land, and simplicity in cooking that mirror the trends of food aficionados today.

The American chef Alice Waters, often credited as a forerunner of modern American cooking, told the Times that Lewis was decades ahead of her time in her writing on food.

When she left Freetown, Edna Lewis headed to New York City, among the millions of African Americans who went to the North in the first half of the twentieth century. She eventually started a restaurant that was patronized by the city’s elite, including such luminaries as Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Paul Robeson and many others.

In the late 1960’s, Lewis was approached by Judith Jones, an editor at the leading publisher A.A. Knopf who had edited the classic “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” which was co-written by Julia Child. Jones and Lewis first worked on a book called “The Edna Lewis Cookbook,” but the end result dissatisfied Jones.

So she and Lewis wrote a second book that is part memoir, part traditional cookbook. “The Taste of Country Cooking,” published first in 1976, is today considered a classic American cookbook and the ultimate guide to Southern cuisine. Unlike many portrayals of Southern food as greasy and heavy, the book uncovers a food tradition that resounds with today’s ethos of farm-to-table eating.

The book also exposes many of the inequities of American racial life. When Jones noticed no recipes for Thanksgiving, Lewis told her that when she was a child, African American families did not celebrate the holiday, but did celebrate June 19 as Emancipation Day. The book includes a menu to mark that day.