Still, amid all the hand-wringing over politics and privilege, it was Ms. Miles’s win that somehow captured hearts. In her own small way, she was like Meghan Markle’s mother, Doria Ragland, at the royal wedding: a secondary character in a larger, predominantly white narrative who emerged as an African-American beacon.

“Her honor acknowledges and celebrates generations of restaurant and home cooks whose recipes got lost in the their employers’ brands,” said Toni Tipton-Martin, a food journalist whose 2015 book, “The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African-American Cookbooks,” explored the history of black cooks in America.

Bill Addison is the national restaurant critic for the website Eater and the chairman of the Beard Foundation’s restaurant-award committee, which develops the list of nominees but doesn’t know the winners until the ceremony. That night in Chicago, he said, he cried “big, salty tears” when he heard Ms. Miles’s name.

Mr. Addison was moved because his committee’s effort to put forth a more diverse slate of candidates had paid off, and also because he, himself a former pastry chef, loves Ms. Miles’s peach cobbler with a passion that borders on fanaticism.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “It’s the best peach cobbler I’ve ever had. All of her cobblers are great, but the peach is the one that makes my soul burst into four-part harmony.”

John T. Edge, the food writer and historian who directs the Southern Foodways Alliance, has long been a devoted fan, too. Like many, he came to know Ms. Miles by way of her coconut pecan cake, a rich cousin of a traditional Southern coconut cake, dressed up in Chantilly cream frosting.