221 - Lena Richard - America's Unknown Celebrity Chef

The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Lena Richard cooked her first chicken on television, she beat Julia Child to the screen by over a decade. At a time when most African American women cooks worked behind swinging kitchen doors, Richard claimed her place as a culinary authority, broadcasting in the living rooms of New Orleans’s elite white families. She was an entrepreneur, educator, author, and an icon—and her legacy lives on in her recipes.

Produced by Sidedoor: A Podcast from the Smithsonian.

Special thanks to producer Lizzie Peabody and the Smithsonian for sharing this story with The Kitchen Sisters Present.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. We are part of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of podcasts created by independent producers—some of the best storytelling out there.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Radio to you.
0:02.2	Welcome to the Kitchen Sisters' presenter, PRX.
0:05.6	We are the Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva.
0:10.2	I'm Mo Raka, and I'm excited to announce season four
0:14.2	of my podcast, Mo Bituaries.
0:16.8	I've got a whole new bunch of stories
0:18.8	to share with you about the most fascinating people
0:21.9	and things who are no longer with us,
0:24.5	from famous figures who died on the very same day.
0:28.9	Which is the things I wish would die, like buffets,
0:33.3	all that and much more.
0:35.3	Listen to Mo Bituaries with Mo Raka,
0:38.0	wherever you get your podcasts.
0:40.6	When Lena Richard was alive,
0:42.3	just about everyone in New Orleans knew her cooking.
0:46.2	She called herself a catarice, but...
0:49.2	She was so many things that it's hard to really determine
0:55.6	what to call her.
0:57.6	This is culinary historian Jessica B. Harris.
1:01.1	I mean, she was such a trailblazer, but an unknown trailblazer.
1:08.5	A woman of color in the Jim Crow South,
1:11.0	Lena Richard defied the place assigned to her
	...

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