Nathalie Dupree, 85, was Southern culinary icon

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Nathalie Dupree.

Credit: Family of Nathalie Dupree via Dignity Memorial

Southern culinary icon Nathalie Dupree has died.

The celebrated cookbook author and television host’s obituary says she died on Monday at her home in North Carolina.

The Virginia native had many Georgia connections, including the cooking school she founded in the mid-1970s at Rich’s department store in downtown Atlanta, where she taught thousands of students.

Her New Southern Cooking debuted on PBS in 1985, applying techniques that she learned at Le Cordon Bleu in London to Southern cooking.

“That was our goal before we started doing the television series,” she said in a 2014 interview with GPB. “To teach people how to cook and teach them about Southern ingredients. That was always my mission. And it makes me feel very good that people still remember it after all these years.”

Dupree also authored 15 cookbooks.

Back in 2014, she was in Savannah to promote one of those cookbooks, Southern Biscuits, co-authored with Cynthia Graubart.

Reflecting on the many changes in Southern cooking since she started the cooking school in 1975, she noted how diverse it had become.

“There is Southern-Italian, there is Southern-French, there is Southern-Chinese cooking and the question is whether that helps or hurts it and we don’t know,” Dupree said. “Just like we didn't know with New Southern Cooking, when I did quick-cooked green beans, whether or not that would hurt Southern cooking. And in fact, people don't cook their green beans for a long time anymore.”

She also reflected on one of her mentors, Julia Child.

Dupree and Graubart won a James Beard Award for their book, Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking, which Dupree said Child encouraged her to write.

“She always felt that Southern cooking was something that she knew nothing about and that I did and that I should really address that head on — the way that she did French cooking,” she said. “Julia was just an inspiration to every woman that’s in the culinary field now.”

Dupree also helped found the Southern Foodways Alliance, a nonprofit organization that promotes Southern culture and culinary arts.

Tributes to her poured in from all over the culinary world.

Savannah-based food writer Damon Lee Fowler called her a “beloved friend, mentor and big sister that I never had” on his Facebook page.

Writing on X, New York-based chef and educator Suvir Saran wrote, “Her way of living, her storytelling, and her deep love for food and people shaped my life.

Natalie Dupree was 85 years old.