Life Lessons from 10 Female TV Chefs
Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Female TV chefs have been demonstrating how to cook on-screen since the very early days of television broadcasting. The first daily lineup of TV shows was aired on NBC to a limited geographic area in 1944, followed by DuMont Television Network in 1946, then CBS and ABC in 1948. It was on channel WPIX 11 in that very first year of broadcasting by CBS in 1948 that our first female TV chef debuted with her own cooking show.
By this point in time (at least in the U.S.) it’s possible and even probable that more people have learned to cook from TV than from cookbooks or by the age-old method of mimicking their mothers cooking in the kitchen. Anecdotally, if you ask a random group of people in the U.S. today how they learned to cook, they’ll answer by giving you the name of their favorite TV chef (while saying how much they love them) and many are now also including the name of their favorite You Tube cooking experts.
The female TV chefs who starred in their own shows during these decades are living proof to the viewing public that actual living, breathing women can and do stand as professional chefs in their own right. Some of these women have worked in restaurants, running kitchens with staff reporting to them, while others have not. What they do have in common is that as TV chefs—with cooking shows broadcast to large audiences—they’ve been much more visible to the world than the majority of women restaurant, hotel or high-production catering chefs who faced enormous gender barriers in the past (and perhaps even today) in seeking gainful employment in these domains deemed culturally and historically exclusive and “for men only.”
Female TV chefs with cooking shows therefore helped to expand the world of opportunities for women whose goals were to be chefs in professional kitchens, while at the same time carrying a banner for good cooking that “anybody” could make at home.
Here’s an intro to 10 well-known female TV chefs from the beginning of the genre till today. There are many more of these women—they’re right there on our TV screens each time we search for cooking inspiration. They guide us on our way to being better cooks and maybe even better people.
1. Dione Lucas Photo by CBS via Getty Images
Born: October 10, 1909, Venice, Italy – Died: 1971, United Kingdom
Education: Le Cordon Bleu Paris
Name of TV Show(s): To The Queen’s Taste (1948), The Dione Lucas Cooking Show (1949)
Quote: “It’s best to cook a strudel when you feel mean. The beast stands or falls on how hard you beat it. If you beat the dough 99 times, you will have a fair strudel. If you beat it 100 times, you will have a good strudel. But if you beat it 101 times, you will have a superb strudel.”
What We Learned from Dione: You might be the only woman in the place, you might be the first woman to do something. Don’t let them scare you off because of that.
2. Julia Child
Born: August 15, 1912, Pasadena, Calif. – Died: August 13, 2004, Montecito, Calif.
Education: Smith College, Le Cordon Bleu Paris
Name of TV Show(s): The French Chef (1963), Julia Child & Company (1978), Julia Child & More Company (1979), Dinner at Julia’s (1983), Cooking in Concert (1993), Cooking with Master Chefs (1993), In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs (1994), Julia Child & Jacques Pepin – More Cooking in Concert (1995), Baking with Julia (1996), Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home (1999), Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom (2000)
Quote: “I was 32 when I started cooking, until then I just ate.”
What We Learned from Julia: Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, just keep going, you’ll eventually get it right.