Nathalie Dupree Left a Legacy of Education, Wit, and Really Juicy Pork Chops

Bestselling author, television host, teacher, and chef Nathalie Dupree died in Raleigh, North Carolina, on January 13, 2025 at the age of 85. Best known for her Southern food evangelism — slathered in saucy wit — she leaves behind her husband Jack Bass (who she told The Daily Meal "liked me because I ate with my fingers"); children Audrey, Ken, David, and Liz; seven grandchildren, and a legacy of education and advocacy for women in the culinary arts.

As the author of the James Beard Award-winning Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking (co-written with frequent collaborator Cynthia Stevens Graubart), New Southern Cooking, Cooking of the South, and 12 other volumes, Dupree's cookbook sales reportedly topped 1 million copies over the span of her career. She was similarly prolific — and popular — as a television guest and host, appearing in more than 300 episodes across PBS, The Food Network, and The Learning Channel, as well as nationally-aired shows including Good Morning America and The Today Show. She co-founded the International Association of Culinary Professionals in 1978 along with Julia Child, Jacques Pépin, and Martin Yan.

Dupree was born in Hamilton, New Jersey, in 1939 and according to the Charleston City Paper, developed a strong interest in politics while growing up in Virginia, eventually becoming a precinct captain for John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign and running a write-in campaign of her own against sitting U.S. Senator Jim DeMint in 2010 in her adopted state of South Carolina. Though she lost that particular race — larded through with quips about how she'd "bring home the bacon" and "cook his goose" — Dupree had no shortage of kitchen coronations throughout her long career, including the Les Dames d’Escoffier "Grande Dame" assignation in 2011, four James Beard Foundation awards, a 2013 Woman of the Year nod from the French Master Chefs of America, and a 2015 induction into the James Beard Foundation's "Who’s Who in America."

A March 1996 Food & Wine feature titled "TV Guidance: A Couch Potato Rates Six Television Chefs" pitted Dupree against contemporaries Martin Yan, Emeril Lagasse, Jeff Smith, Graham Kerr, and "Biker Billy" Hufnagle. The critique acknowledged her celebrity as the host of the PBS television series New Southern Cooking, and noted that she “delivers inspired combinations and clever substitutions,” but added that “Dupree's endearing klutziness — forgetting to add yeast to bread dough, for instance — doesn't quite compensate for her sometimes superior attitude.”

Though graded a baffling C for style and B for substance to the only woman in the bunch, \no doubt the indefatigable Dupree blew off the slight. Her focus, eternally, was on education, especially for aspiring female culinarians. After earning a diploma at Le Cordon Bleu in London, Dupree worked as a chef at restaurants in Georgia (her own Nathalie’s Restaurant in Social Circle, which she opened with her "favorite former husband" David Dupree), Virginia, and Majorca, Spain, (she left the latter irked by a review that called her a "kitchen manager" rather than a chef). But over the course of 10 years as director of the Rich’s Cooking School in Atlanta, Dupree mentored scores of students (who she referred to as her "chickens") — such as Virginia Willis, Marion Sullivan, and Shirley Corriher — who went on to establish notable food careers of their own.

"One pork chop in the pan goes dry. Two or more, the fat from one feeds the other."

Nathalie Dupree

Dupree told The New American Kitchen host Gary Duff in a 2015 radio interview, "What means a great deal to me is teaching so many women to cook, and most of them were Southern women. With this full time participation school — I was the only cooking school really in the South — I had hundreds and thousands of women that went out in the world, and so many of them now have written cookbooks."

It's a prime example of Dupree's so-called "Pork Chop Theory," which she explained in a 2018 interview with Rien Fertel for the Southern Foodways Alliance — another organization that she helped found. "The most important thing is for women to learn to help each other. So we developed the pork chop theory," Dupree said. "One pork chop in the pan goes dry. Two or more, the fat from one feeds the other. We need to find a way to elevate two or more women at a time. I just want those women to be able to have their place in the sun."

On a personal note, while I didn't know Dupree well, at the 2015 Charleston Wine & Food Festival, I had the particular honor (and slight terror) of moderating a discussion with her and Graubert entitled "50 Shades of Earl Grey: High Tea With Nathalie Dupree" — playing into Dupree's predilection for entendre and occasionally racy subject matter. Tickets were $125 (including a bounty of roe-topped cucumber rounds, pimento cheese sandwiches, hot and cold tea-based cocktails, and a copy of Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking), tables were set with silver, flowers, and china cups and saucers, and a well-heeled audience was primed to hang on her every word. Looking back at my texts from the day, I note that I'd heard from a friend in attendance that people at her table were "scandalized" by the conversation. Another responded, "Hell, it was clearly branded as a saucy talk. Nathalie was holding a whip. I bet the audience loved it." Another said, "I know all about the on-your-toes-ness requirements. She is the original Southern food diva." Saucy to the end and the whole way through.

Donations in memory of Dupree can be made to the Atlanta Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier's Scholarship Fund to help further the careers of young women in the culinary arts.

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