A panel discussion remembering Judith Jones at The New School.

During the last 60 years, no cookbook editor has influenced American culinary life more than did Judith Jones (1924-2017). In her 57 years at Alfred A. Knopf, she launched the careers of many major food writers, beginning with Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, and Madhur Jaffrey. Almost 50 years ago she introduced the British scholar-writer Claudia Roden to American audiences. In 1976 she inaugurated an era of serious investigation into African American cooking with Edna Lewis’s The Taste of Country Cooking. She created the ambitious series Knopf Cooks American, which surveyed traditions ranging from Southern baking (Bill Neal’s Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie) to the Italian-American kitchens of Rhode Island (Nancy Verde Barr’s We Called It Macaroni). She made Lidia Bastianich a household name, and gave cooks an enlarged understanding of American and worldwide Jewish cuisine through her many editor-writer partnerships with Joan Nathan.

With her husband, Evan Jones, Judith also wrote the cookbooks Knead It, Punch It, Bake It!: The Book of Bread, and The Book of New New England Cookery. Among her solo works were the memoir The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food (2007) and the cookbook The Pleasures of Cooking for One (2009). Judith was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame last year and she won a JBF Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.

Panelists include Joan Nathan, author of King Solomon’s Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World (2017); Ray Sokolov, author of Steal the Menu: A Memoir of Forty Years in Food (2013); Laura Shapiro, author of What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories (2017); Anne Mendelson, author of Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages (2008); Madhur Jaffrey, author of Vegetarian India: A Journey Through the Best of Indian Home Cooking (2015); and Bronwyn Dunne, Judith Jones’s step-daughter. Moderated by New School Food Studies faculty member Andrew F. Smith. Sponsored by the Food Studies and the Creative Writing programs at the New School for Public Engagement, in cooperation with the James Beard Foundation, the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts, the Museum of Food and Drink, and the Institute of Culinary Education.

This is a free event, see here to register.