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Phila Cousins, Julia’s niece, first got to know her aunt and Paul while she was a student at Radcliffe.

Two sisters from the Lovers of the Holy Cross Congregation, Agnes Phila and Lucia Khambang, then took over the leadership, defying Boonlue’s increasingly strident demands to convert.

Then, in 2015, I was asked, along with two other Nashville cooks, to help prepare an honorary dinner for a Very Important Dame of Southern Cooking, Phila Hach.

Phila’s résumé, just to give you an idea, includes practically inventing airline food, cooking for presidents and Princess Diana, and hosting the first cooking show on PBS, on which she also featured her dear friend and brilliant cook Martha Morman, who thus became one of the first black people on American television.

I dove into Phila’s 17 cookbooks, deciding that one of my most important connections with her was the redoubtable chess pie.