Natalie Dupree, the “Queen of Southern Cooking,'' dies at age 85

Southern cookbook author, television personality, and culinary guru Natalie Dupree's personal life was as messy as her kitchen, and her passion for literature and politics led her to create a biscuit-fueled salon. , who led a bizarre run for the U.S. Senate, died Monday. She was 85 years old in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Her death was confirmed by her longtime producer and collaborator Cynthia Graubart at the skilled nursing center where she had entered after breaking her hip.

Ms. Dupree was a special blend of Southern hospitality and risqué charm. Throughout her career, she was called the “Julia Child of the South,” the “Queen of Southern Cooking,” and the “anti-Martha Stewart.”

She ended an elegantly funny segment on the Today show in which she cooked a whole roasted pork crown by presenting a chocolate cake from the supermarket, shocking host Katie Couric. She filmed an episode of the TV show with a red AIDS ribbon pinned to her apron, a bold move in the 1980s when conservative suburban women made up the bulk of the audience.

“She is one of the few people in my life who seems more like a fictional character than a real person,” wrote novelist Pat Conroy in The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes for My Life. and Monogatari” (2009). , after taking Mr. Dupree's class. “We never know where Natalie's train of thought will take her. All we know is that the train won't arrive on time, it'll take too many passengers, and it'll end up somewhere on the tracks. This meant colliding with a stopped food truck on the damaged track.”

Ms. Dupree helped create the new Southern food movement, which took hold in the 1990s. She founded the University of Mississippi as a way to break down stereotypes of chicken fry in the American South and shine an honest lens on how race, gender, and politics influence its delicate, seasonally diverse cuisine. He helped form the Southern Foodways Alliance, which is based in the United States. .

She wrote 15 cookbooks and hosted more than 300 television episodes, but her desire to reach the level of fame that she felt was unfairly given to Southern cooks like Paula Deen I was fighting.

“I was really lucky to be able to support myself well, but I never wanted to be rich. My goal was just to live a good life,” she said. He spoke on the podcast “The New American Kitchen” in 2015. “I saw Paula Deen's house for sale in Savannah the other day for $12.7 million or so and thought, 'Wow, if I were later, I'd be Paula Deen. 'And I thought, 'I didn't want that.' ”

Her early attempts at cooking were unsuccessful. Although she did not graduate from college, she spent the summer of 1958 at Harvard University's International Boarding House, where she was asked to fill in for a sick cook. Tuna casserole seemed like an easy enough dish to tackle. She thought she could feed 18 people just by increasing the recipe.

“I ended up alternating layers of grease and tuna,” she told the Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1999.

Dupree removed the oil and gave it a good stir. She spooned the mixture onto toast and called it “Tuna a la King.” The hook is set.

Her culinary journey began in London, where she moved in 1969 with her second husband, David Dupree. (Her previous marriage to a political activist lasted one year. Although she and Mr. Dupree would later divorce, she always referred to Mr. Dupree as her favorite ex-husband.)

Dupree enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu, a French culinary school, and briefly worked as a cook at a French restaurant on the Spanish island of Mallorca.

The couple moved to her husband's hometown of Social Circle, Georgia, where she decided to create a restaurant using Southern ingredients and French techniques. In 1971, that restaurant, Natalie's, opened in the back of her husband's antique shop. Fans came from as far away as Atlanta, about 45 minutes away.

In 1975, she founded a culinary school at Rich's, then Atlanta's premier department store. She persuaded Julia Child, Jacques Pépin, and Paul Prudhomme to teach her classes. In 1978, she joined forces with Mr. Pépin, Mr. Child, and several others to found the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

But Ms. Dupree wanted to be on TV. Caught between Ms. Child's black-and-white days and the birth of the Food Network in the 1990s, she became part of a small cadre of weekend public television cooks who emerged in the 1980s.

Her 1986 debut, New Southern Cooking with Nathalie Dupree, also came with a cookbook. Ms. Child's editor, Judith Jones, took it on. “New Southern Cuisine'' has reached its 25th printing.

Her early television shows were designed solely by Ms. Grabert and sponsored by the Southern Flour Company. Ms. Dupree wanted the kitchen portion to be run without editing. With flour on her face, she might leave an ingredient half-cooked or forget to add it altogether. She kept wiping her hands on her apron and once looked around for a diamond ring that had fallen while cooking.

“Everything that happens to me will happen to you,” she told the audience after her failure.

“She was a messed up person, and that's why people loved her,” Graubart, who co-authored “Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking” with Dupree in 2012, said in a phone interview.

Natalie Evelyn Meyer was born on December 23, 1939 in Hamilton, New Jersey, the middle of three children of Evelyn (Kreiser) and Walter Meyer. Her mother was a secretary and a Christian Scientist, and Dupree struggled with religion as she grew up.

Her childhood home in Alexandria, Virginia, was a violent one ruled by her strict father, an Army colonel. Her mother divorced him in 1949, and the children grew up worrying about eviction notices and empty cupboards.

School and politics became a refuge. At age 20, she worked as a campaign manager for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign, and in 2010 ran her own campaign as a write-in candidate, seeking to unseat Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina. developed a movement. One of her slogans was “Crème Demint.”

By then she had married her third husband, political writer and historian Jack Bass. His books include an extensive biography of former senator and South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond.

The two became darlings of Charleston's literary and political circles. They hosted parties and fundraisers at Charleston's charming, messy, art-filled home on Queen Street, where she served dishes from recipes she always tried.

Graubart said Dupree had been a heavy drinker for many years and was sometimes verbally abusive to those close to him. She eventually replaced alcohol with Diet Coke and dedicated herself to helping people who wanted to get sober or stay sober.

She founded several branches of Les Dames d'Escoffiers, the international association for women in the culinary industry. She raised teenage girls and became a mentor to a group of aspiring chefs and food writers she called the Chickens.

Cookbook author Virginia Willis was one of them. She still cites Mr. Dupree's theory of pork chop collaboration. If you cook pork chops in one pot over high heat, they will burn. However, if you cook two pork chops in a pot, they will end up eating each other's fat.

“She described it as a way to manage her jealousy and a way to work with others,” Willis said. “It's not about competition. It's about sharing the fat and sharing the love.”

Her husband survives, as do her stepchildren Audrey Tio, Ken Bass, David Bass and Liz Broadway; her sister, Marie Louise Meyer; her brother, James Gordon Meyer; and seven grandchildren.

Ms. Dupree never missed an opportunity to express her opinion. Three months before her death, she gave Ms. Graubert the words that should be published in her obituary in the New York Times. It is the very first thing we control when we are infants and the very last thing we control when we die. Those who control their diets control their families. ”