Sheila Lukins

If you want to understand the impact Sheila Lukins had on American cooking, start with her breakfast strata. Usually made from little more than dull layers of bread, cheese and eggs, in Lukins' hands the dish became a bold delicacy with prosciutto, arugula and pesto. The fact that her recipes contained ingredients most Americans had never heard of in the 1980s hardly mattered. Lukins, who died Aug. 30 of brain cancer at age 66, knew how to make things taste good.

She taught the rest of us as well. If Julia Child gave American women the information and confidence to master the French classics, Lukins freed them from the strictures of a single cuisine. In her best-selling Silver Palate cookbooks, co-authored with Julee Rosso, she borrowed flavors and techniques from around the world to create a sophisticated style that 1980s America, with its new prosperity and attention to food, was ready to claim as its own. The dinner party was never the same.

So closely attuned to the era's zeitgeist was Lukins that it's hard to say now whether she created the decade's culinary trends or merely reflected them. But her essential message remains relevant in today's foodie culture. In the second Silver Palate cookbook, she summarized it near a recipe for hollandaise: "Trust your own good taste in the kitchen."