When it was all ready one afternoon last week - the dry-brined turkey a rosy chestnut brown, the Sister Frances' Potatoes (named for one of the last of the famously celibate Shakers), the brothy, purposefully not creamy blue-pumpkin soup (with a sour jolt of preserved lemon), Melissa Hamilton beamed at what she had wrought.

Elizabeth Wellington: Billie Holiday is beaming in a 1956 photograph as she gazes at singer Billy Eckstine. Her trademark flower is pinned behind...