Remembering Nathalie Dupree - No. 322

The cookbook author and teacher died Monday in Raleigh, NC. I share her famous biscuit recipe + some memories

Nathalie Dupree. Photos from the Nathalie Dupree archive, Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of South Carolina Libraries.

YESTERDAY, AS I PREPARED the final edits on this week’s newsletter, I received word that cookbook author and television personality Nathalie Dupree had died. She was 85. Nathalie was a dear friend and mentor. I knew she had been sick, and while I was in Raleigh, North Carolina on book tour this past October, I stopped to visit her and say goodbye.

When I was fresh out of college, I was hired as a newspaper food writer because I could write. I wasn’t yet 22 years old, for goodness sakes, and I had barely left my mother’s kitchen. I couldn’t cook. So how could I write about food in a way that would make seasoned cooks want to read me?

Let’s just say, I enlisted the help of an expert, and her name was Nathalie Dupree. She not only let me attend cooking classes for free at her school in the basement of the Rich’s department store in downtown Atlanta, but she introduced me to luminaries such as Julia Child and her husband Paul who inspired me.

Nathalie leading the Rich’s Cooking School, downtown Atlanta, in late 1970s.

Once we got to know each other better, Nathalie suggested I drop by her home for dinner one night. And when I did, I wasn’t alone. There were TV personalities, novelists, the mayor, a city councilman, a retired Georgia comptroller, a caterer, and the list could go on. Like Gertrude Stein, she gathered this salon of Atlanta’s movers and shakers and served us dinner from the leftovers of that day’s cooking class. Or, should I say, her assistant Kate Almand was in the kitchen preparing the food. Nathalie was busy being Nathalie—loveable, charming, and a bit of a rascal.

She would give me all kinds of advice through the years, and some of it I actually heeded like get out of Atlanta and go to Paris and study cooking, which I did. And while we lost touch a bit, we reconnected in Charleston, South Carolina, years later. Like good friends, we picked up where we left off.

Nathalie had a word for the women she mentored. She was the mother hen, and we were her ‘’chickens.’’

Four of the five ‘’chickens’’ who prepared Nathalie’s James Beard House dinner in 2019.

About five years ago, Nathalie was to be honored at a tribute dinner at the James Beard House in New York. I was one of five ‘’chickens’’ she asked to prepare the meal. And my course was, to no surprise, dessert. I selected three of her favorite cakes —Coca-Cola cake because she was obsessed with Diet Coke, coconut, and caramel. I baked miniature versions of each of these cakes and served them with scoops of buttermilk ice cream to more than 150 people. (It was a fabulous experience, but I am ever so glad I’m not a restaurant pastry chef.)

When I visited Nathalie this past fall, we talked about old times, and we laughed about old bosses and boyfriends (fortunately not one and the same). And yes, she was sipping a Diet Coke. She looked beautiful with her silver hair perfectly styled in an angled bob, and she was wearing a sky blue blouse and scarf. Blue was her favorite color.

How do you bid farewell to a friend who has done so much for you? How do you say goodbye to someone you know you will never see again? I told her I would always love her, and that is the truth.

Television made Nathalie famous, and she turned her on-air mistakes and missteps in the kitchen into signature moments, said her good friend and former student, the late novelist Pat Conroy. Viewers hung on her every word. Here is the story I wrote about Nathalie in the first year of my writing this newsletter:

The best Nathalie story I’ve ever read was written by Pat Conroy as the first chapter in The Pat Conroy Cookbook, which by some miraculous stroke of luck is available to read in this Google preview.

And here is her obituary sharing more detail of Nathalie’s amazing life.

Rest in peace, Nathalie. The world misses you already.

- xo, Anne

P.S. I’m sharing Nathalie’s biscuit recipe from my new cookbook, Baking in the American South. It’s easy and so delicious. (Her biscuits are the ones in the middle of the photo below.) I’ll be sending out my regular newsletter post later this week.

THE RECIPE:

Nathalie Dupree’s Cream Biscuits

Nathalie Dupree says every biscuit has a purpose. If you ask her, ‘’What is the best biscuit?’’ she will answer, ‘’Best biscuit for what? Butter and jam? Sausage patties? Pork tenderloin? Breakfast? Dinner?’’ Nathalie likes a soft and fluffy biscuit filled with pork tenderloin. And when you’ve written 13 Southern cookbooks, run a restaurant in Newton County, Georgia, and taught cooking in nine television series as well as in person at Rich’s Cooking School in Atlanta for a decade, you have a pretty good idea about biscuits.

Makes 14 2-inch biscuits

Prep: 15 to 20 minutes

Bake: 14 to 18 minutes

2 tablespoons butter, melted, for brushing the pan and finishing the biscuits, divided

2 1/4 cups (270 grams) self-rising flour, plus a little more for handling the dough (see Note)

1 1/4 cups heavy cream

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat the oven to 450ºF. Brush a 9-inch round cake layer pan with about 1 tablespoon of the melted butter and set aside.

2. Place the flour in a large bowl, and pour in 1 cup of the cream. Stir with a fork until ingredients come together, and add the remaining 1/4 cup cream as needed so the dough comes together into a ball.

3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board. With floured hands, pat it out into a rough rectangle and fold in half. Pat it out again into a rectangle and fold in half again. Pat it out to 3/4-inch thickness, and cut out 14 2-inch rounds. If needed, patch together the scraps, reroll, and cut out the last biscuits. Place them side by side in the prepared pan.

4. Bake until golden brown, about 14 to 18 minutes. Brush with the remaining 1 tablespoon melted butter while hot, then serve.

Note: Nathalie suggests a soft flour such as White Lily for this recipe.