The Recipe with Kenji and Deb - Before Kenji and Deb, there was Lena

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Deb and Kenji are taking a break this week. Please enjoy this classic episode from our friends at Sidedoor, "America’s Unknown Celebrity Chef". For more information, visit Sidedoor's episode page, and subscribe to Sidedoor on your favorite podcast player.****************************** 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. Today: her improbable rise to prominence, and her famous gumbo. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

One of our fellow Radiotopia shows is the award-winning music podcast Song Exploder, where musicians tell the story of how they created one of their songs. This year, Song Exploder has introduced a new series in their feed called Key Change. It's not about songs that people made, it's about the songs that made people who they are. The host Rishikesh Hirway talks to guests about a piece of music that was transformative for them. So far there are episodes with actress Sophie Thatcher on Elliot Smith, with author and

poet Hanif Abdurraqib on The Clash, and with comedian James Acaster on Outkast. Conversations are intimate and a wonderful peek into how music can change the way we see the world and ourselves. KeyChange comes out once a month on the Song Exploder feed, so check it out by searching for Song Exploder on your podcast app or go to songexploder.net slash key change. Hi, side door listeners. A quick message to say that this is a story we've been working on for a few months now, but it feels especially weighty in light of the events of the past few weeks.

It's a story that takes place in segregated America, and it resonates today in ways that indicate we still have a long way to go as a country. We're going to share it as planned, but we do want to note that the story makes mention of racial violence. This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX. I'm Lizzie cookbooks now as we speak because I'm long overdue in making my gumbo. Paula Rhodes is a lawyer, professor, and human rights advocate. She's also a really good

cook. Okay. On page 135 of her cookbook, there is a brief description of making of the roux, since that's a base for a lot of the recipes, not just the gumbo. Paula lives in Denver now, but she grew up in New Orleans. And when I called her up, she was patient enough to walk me through a New Orleans classic,

her grandmother's gumbo recipe. Starting with the roux. Okay. Your heat, set. a New Orleans classic, her grandmother's gumbo recipe. Starting with the roux. Okay, your heat's set. All right, high heat. Then you add flour. Flour's going in. You stir until light brown.

If you overcook it, then when you add liquids and stuff, it's not going to come out the right consistency. How do I know, it's not going to come out the right consistency. How do I know when it's ready? Add onions. Okay, here we go. And continue to stir until onions and flour are a golden brown.

So that's her basic recipe for a roof. Paula learned to cook from her mother, who in turn learned from Paula's grandmother, Lena Richard. Lena Richard died when Paula was just a baby, but Paula's heard lots of stories about her grandmother, from her family, but also from relative strangers. Because when Lena Richard was alive, just about everyone in New Orleans knew her cooking.

She called herself a cateress, but... She was so many things that it's hard to really determine what to call her. This is culinary historian Jessica B. Harris. I mean, she was such a trailblazer, but an unknown trailblazer. A woman of color in the Jim Crow South, Lena Richard defied the place assigned to her based on her race and gender, to become a celebrity chef. She had her own televised cooking show more than a decade before Julia Child. She faced down barriers we still grapple with as a nation today, to claim her place as a

culinary icon. This time on Side Door, Lena Richards' extraordinary story, and my very ordinary attempt at her famous gumbo. After the break. Lina Richard was only 14 years old when she started working, which seems awfully young. But this was the early 1900s, and for an African-American girl in New Orleans, going to work for a wealthy white family would have been pretty normal. Her mother was the maid for a prominent New Orleans family, the Varon family, and when

Lena wasn't in school, she went along to help. She started off, you know, preparing lunches for the children and just some household tasks here and there. This is Ashley Rose Young, historian of the American Food History Project at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. And she has spent a decade retracing Lena Richard's life through oral histories and archival research. And Ashley says Lena Richard might easily have grown up to follow in her mother's footsteps.

But around 19 years of age, an opportunity arose that really changed Richard's life. And that was the fact that the Varins cook left the household. And Mrs. Varin actually asked Richard if she could prepare dinner one night. Lena Richard wrote about that night in a short autobiographical essay. She told me I could buy just what I wanted to. I got a chicken, made stew, and had fruit for dessert. From this time on, it seemed that no other cook could please her. We asked New Orleans chef Dee Levine to read Richard's words for us for this episode.

I was getting $10 a month and was raised to $15. She then told me that I could go to the store and pick out any kind of cooking utensils that I wanted, and that she was going to give me cooking lessons and send me to cooking schools and every demonstration. If no other colored women could get places, I certainly could. Lena Richard had a very close relationship with Mrs. Varon, and once she saw this talent that Richard had cultivated at such a young age, she encouraged Richard to experiment in the home. And eventually, she sent her to cooking school in Boston, a renowned cooking school for women

at the time. Lauren Henry Christel Moten is a curator of African American history and the Division of Work and Industry at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. And so what the support does is it allows her access to educational opportunity that was not open to her, that would have excluded her based on her race and her gender. So in 1918, Lena Richard, age 20 or so, heads north to Mrs. Farmer's cooking school. Okay, so do we have any idea what that might have been like for her? Women of color had to acquire the permission of every white woman in the class so as to attend the class with them.

Wait a minute, every white woman in the class had to give written consent that they were okay with being in class with a black woman? Yes, you know, there's the stereotype that racial segregation was something of the American South, but racial segregation permeated every aspect of the United States. It was not the Jim Crow South. It was the Jim Crow nation, right? And separate or equal forms the basis of a Jim Crow segregated society. Blacks and whites cannot sit together. Richard ate her meals in a separate dining room

from her white classmates. But the classes themselves were kind of a confidence boost. I found out in a hurry. They can't teach me much more than I know. I learned things about new desserts and salads, but when it comes to cooking meats, stews, soups, sauces, and such dishes, we Southern cooks have Northern cooks beat by a mile. That's not big talk. That's the honest truth.

The eight-week course gave Lena something more valuable than cooking instruction. It gave her credibility as a trained professional, a rare thing for a woman of color at that time. And it gave her an idea. I cooked a couple of my dishes like creole gumbo and my chicken boulevard, and they go crazy almost, trying to copy down what I say. I think maybe I'm pretty good,

so someday I'd write it down myself. There's the seed of an idea that maybe one day she should actually write a cookbook, and as we will see down the road, that's exactly what happened. But hold on, we're not there yet. First, Lena returns to New Orleans, gets married, and with the help of the Varan family connections and her new cred as a cooking school graduate, she starts her own catering business around 1928. This is culinary historian Jessica B. Harris again. Catering was a traditional path for African American women in food from street vending to catering because setting up a restaurant was costly and everyone couldn't.

But Lena Richards' catering stood apart from all the rest. So she was perhaps best known for this dessert that she called Dream Melon. And she called it Dream Melon because she came up with the idea in her sleep. And it's basically an edible watermelon made completely out of ice cream and sherbet. And she would use little raisins as the seed. So once you take it out of the mold, you would have this perfect dainty little ice cream melon slice that you could eat through the rind and people just loved it.

They went wild for this dream melon." The local paper wrote that Lena Richards' watermelon ice cream, quote, has delighted many a New Orleans socialite and usually brings gasps of admiration at such places as the New Orleans Club. Lena Richard's edible artistry made her a star among the white New Orleans elite. She could make anything, from sculptural showstoppers to jambalaya and red beans and rice to dainty tea sandwiches. She had the range and reputation to build her business throughout the Depression years,

and in 1937, she opened her own cooking school. There was very much a racial component, if you will, to her desire to open that cooking school and to specifically open it for African Americans so that they could get better employment. So she really had an eye to elevating the community as a whole and making a path for other young professionals. Yeah, back could get better employment. So she really had an eye to elevating the community as a whole and making a path for other young professionals. Yeah, back there, there was a term, I don't know if it was in use in New Orleans,

but it was certainly in use in the North of being a race man or a race woman. She was certainly that, she was out for the race. My purpose in opening a cooking school was to teach men and women the art of food preparation and serving in order that they would become capable of preparing and serving food for any occasion. And also that they might be in a position

to demand higher wages. The cooking school is one of the most important aspects of her career to me, because it really shows how Richard was so invested in her community. And while she was teaching cooking classes, she was also teaching herself how to break down recipes into precise measurements and simple, replicable steps. So the cooking school actually ended up being a laboratory of sorts for her to start working on that cookbook she first had an idea for back

at the Fannie Farmer School in 1918. 20 years after the idea began percolating, Lena Richard self-published her cookbook in 1939. The title, Lena Richards Cookbook. So tell me about the cookbook. – It is described by some as the best Creole cookbook ever written. – Really? – Yes, yes. I mean, this is an important work because this is the first African American authored Creole cookbook. And that's huge. Now, I want to bring up here an important kind of definition of Creole cooking. And when I say Creole cooking, I mean cooking of the city of New Orleans. And as a port city, New Orleans had a very diverse population.

And so it was many communities coming together in tension and in communion to create this cuisine that's very distinct to the city itself. And Ashley says what's important for us to understand is how historically the cuisine of this diverse city was represented by only one group of people. The first Creole cookbooks that were published were published by white authors, and that started a tradition that privileged white's voices in defining Creole cuisine. In fact, the first cookbook in 1885, La Cuisine Creole, was authored by someone who wasn't even a chef. His name was Lafcadio Hearn, and he wasn't even from New Orleans. In fact, he just compiled these recipes from New Orleanians

and placed them in this work to be sold. And so it's not until almost 55 years later, when Richard publishes this self-titled cookbook, that we have an African American author defining Creole cuisine on her own terms and for her community. And that is so important. In that first cookbook from 1885, the one by Lafcadio Hearn, there's a picture on the cover of a smiling African-American woman in a headscarf and a checkered dress holding a pot. The image of the stereotypical quote black mammy. So this is a figure of a woman of color smiling, jovial, kind, willing to quote unquote serve other people. And baked into this image are many stereotypes. One of them that the skills it took to run the house and cook the meals were not learned, but somehow

inherent. That African Americans were innately good cooks. There are quotes that paraphrase pretty much say, you know, if the big house cook is ill, just go down to the quarters and pretty much ask anybody and they can come up and fill in. This is a very harmful stereotype as many scholars have pointed out, including Toni Tipton Martin who wrote this incredible book called The Jemima Code, where she really homes in on this idea of how destructive an Aunt Jemima stereotype can be.

Destructive in what sense? It places women of color who work in food industries in a subservient role. It makes them palatable and acceptable for white audiences. And that is racism at its core. And then you have a woman like Lena Richard, who has a self-titled cookbook who comes in and

says, I own these recipes, and I used hard work, culinary classes, technology to build these recipes in an accessible, scientifically informed manner. She's not just doing this because it's intuition, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. She's a trained individual. In the preface of her cookbook, Lena Richard wrote, The secrets of Creole cooking, which have been kept for years by the old French chef, are herein revealed.

There is no need to experiment, for I have done the experimenting in my own laboratory kitchen, as well as in my cooking school." In the front of Lena Richards' cookbook, there's no anonymous woman in a checkered dress. There's a portrait of Lena, wearing pearls, hair coiffed in a 1930s wave, smiling slightly. It's a professional headshot. And that just reverses the stereotype of the Jemima code. It puts it on its head, and it presents an entirely new image

of what an African-American cook is. After the break, Lena takes her new book on the road north to show those Yankees how gumbo is made. Meanwhile, I'll be checking on my gumbo because I think it's time to add the stock. We're back, and here's where we are. Holy sh**. Oh no, now there's chicken stock all over my kitchen. I just spilled chicken stock all over my kitchen floor.

In an attempt to make gumbo, one of the 333 recipes in Lena Richards' 1939 cookbook, the first Creole cookbook published by an African American author. And unlike so many self-published books, this one did not languish on bookstore shelves. Within a week of the book's publication, 200 people sent letters from Philly, New York, and Boston trying to order it. In an era before Amazon, that's pretty remarkable. Historian Ashley Rose Young put it this way. Her book was blowing up. I mean, it was all the rage. So what does she do next? Goes on book tour, of course.

All the rage. So what does she do next? Goes on book tour, of course. Lena and her assistant, her daughter Marie, head north, suitcases bulging with 10 pounds of cane syrup, Louisiana shell, pecans, old-fashioned brown sugar, and shrimp. Wait, did she really pack shrimp? Yes. Tried shrimp. Yeah.

She wanted to be sure she had everything she needed to give proper cooking demonstrations while promoting her book. But to travel all the way from New Orleans to New York for Lena was a risk. And a warning for our listeners, this next section describes racial violence. How dangerous would it have been to travel as a black woman during that time? It could have been very dangerous, and dangerous in the sense that black women faced a very real threat of sexual violence and sexual harassment. Because accommodations were segregated, they couldn't go to perhaps mainstream hotels and

restaurants. That puts women in a precarious situation. Smithsonian curator Crystal Moten says it's important to remember that in this period following the Great Depression and World War I, leading into World War II, lynchings were happening. The images of lynching were circulating around the country, right? Lynching postcards, travel through the postal service. And so it was in the public consciousness, in African Americans' consciousness.

Did you say lynching postcards? Definitely. Yeah. That speaks to when you ask about the danger. Right? Lynching postcards depicted murders and were sent openly through the U. until 1908 when they were outlawed. But people still sent them just in envelopes. That's the environment that Lena Richard and Marie were traveling in. That's the environment. That's the environment. Many times lynching occurred not because of, you know, a suspected sexual violence against white women,

but because African- American folks were becoming economically successful and they were becoming threats to a social, economic, and political order that threatened white supremacy. And so for Lena Richard to say, I am going to step out of the societal structure that would have me be a so-called menial servant that's saying no to a culture where severe violent reprisals could happen as a result. So it's pretty courageous that she made this trip to New York, but also that she was daring to place herself in that role of authority.

That's right. But during this book tour, something amazing happens. A major publisher, Houghton Mifflin, decides to republish Richard's cookbook for national distribution. For Lena Richard to be picked up by this huge mainstream press is just, you know, it's astonishing, really. Backed by Hotten Mifflin, Lena Richard's name starts circulating the country. And this is where she goes from local to national celebrity.

I think it's fair to say when a family like the Rockefellers calls you and recruits you to be the head chef of one of their new restaurants, I think that's how we might define celebrity, right? When the Rockefellers call you up. The Rockefellers. The 1%. The oil tycoons. At the Rockefellers restaurant, the Travis House, Lena Richard cooked for high-ranking

British military officials and even Winston Churchill's family. She wrote, Mrs. Churchill and her daughter Mary came back to see me and shook my hand. I've got Mrs. Churchill's autograph in one of my books, and she's got mine. People came from California, New Mexico, and Indiana to taste her dishes. I mean, people came to the Travis House because they knew Richard was the head chef, and they loved the particular dishes she made there. I mean, you can see that in the guest book reviews that people left, the comments, oh

my gosh. My dear Lena, seldom have I enjoyed a meal as much as I have in dining here. And I have dined with royalty. Oh, Lena, what oysters? Lena, your oysters actually have character. Lena Richard, we think your oysters are superb. The oysters are superbly.

My compliments, your gifted fingers have given the oysters a soul. What oysters? And they aren't oysters, but perfection. I mean those oysters, if I could go back in time and have any dish, it would be Lena Richards' scalloped oysters. So you see the Travis House really just building up and adding to a national reputation. By the late 1940s, the now nationally known Lena Richard was back in New Orleans. There, she started an international frozen food business, opened her own fine dining

restaurant, and nearly 15 years before Julia Child appeared on TV in The French Chef, Lena Richard starred in her own cooking show. When her program aired in 1949 on WDSU TV, the local channel in New Orleans, this was a big deal. I mean, it was the first culinary program on WDSU TV, and it was likely the first program in the country that starred an African-American chef. The show was called Lena Richards New Orleans Cookbook. In each 30-minute episode, she guided viewers through one of her recipes.

It aired twice a week, alongside shows like Howdy Doody, Broadway Review, and How to Improve Golf. I'm sorry. That sounds like the most boring show in the universe. Well, it also kind of indicates who were the TV viewers at the time. Remember what a nascent medium TV was back then? TV was only owned by the elite in the late 40s. We're not even talking about the degree of popularity that TV had in the days of Julia Child, and this predates Julia Child by decades.

But unlike Julia Child's show, we won't ever know what Lena Richards sounded like, because no record of the show exists. So this is one of the heartbreaking things about studying Richard's story, which is that we don't have any recordings of her television program. We don't even have scripts. And believe me, I have looked at every archive imaginable, and I just can't find this evidence. All we have to go by are the memories of New Orleanians who watched her show, like Ruth Satteran, whom Ashley spoke with back in 2011.

She remembered the kinds of meals Lena Richard prepared on the show. of red beans and meatballs and red gravy and stews, gumbos and kind of food. And when she was talking to you, it was like you were talking to her in her kitchen. Because she was really unique and original. And when you watched, did you just watch the show or did you take notes that she said something? Oh, I always took just have paper and pencil.

This year might pick up something new. Decades after leaving the Varan family home, at the height of her career, Lena Richard was back in the homes of white families, but in a completely new way. Black women were usually hidden away in the kitchen. Black women were supposed to be seen and not heard, right? But that is not what is happening in this cooking show. So here she is, she's seen and she's heard. Right.

And she's not behind the kitchen doors, she's in the living room. That's right. That's right. And she's in the living room, perhaps reaching more people than she could have imagined. It is absolutely unfathomable. This is a black woman on TV as an authority. Name five in 2020. They don't exist. By 1950, Lena Richard had built a culinary empire.

Her book had sold so well, Houghton Mifflin was working on a second, expanded edition. Her restaurant, Frozen Food Business, in school were thriving. She'd hobnobbed with the Churchills and the Rockefellers. She was a New Orleans TV star. She was really just kind of starting out on this truly nationally known stardom. And so what happened? After a year and some change after her TV program premiered, she went home not feeling well and in November of 1950 she passed away of a heart attack and her story abruptly ends. Lina Richard was about 50 years old. Do you ever wonder what might have happened if she hadn't died so young and so suddenly?

I think about it a lot actually. You know, she is a role model of mine and I think a role model for many people who know her story and I can't help but think about what else she could have done had she been able to stay on TV at a time where those local programs started broadcasting nationally. I think she would be a household name. In the short time that she had, she did a hell of a lot. God bless her, she kicked some doors in that we're still trying to keep open. trying to keep open. So it says the last step is season with salt and pepper and just before serving stir in

filet. All right, moment of truth. Lena Richards gumbo. That's gumbo. Mmm. That's really good. That's really good. I think we call that a success. Lena Richard was born into a segregated country, and she died without ever knowing that that would change. But she claimed a new place for herself, publicly, unapologetically, in America's kitchens and living rooms, and opened the door for others to come.

It was not just about the cooking skills and abilities and stuff, but it was about the community and being part of a community and the shared. I mean it really was. It takes a lot to kind of be aware of the world you live in and say, I am going to create another world for myself. And I think that's what Lena Richard did. You've been listening to Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX. If you'd like to try Lena Richard's gumbo recipe, and believe me, you do, you can find it in our newsletter. Subscribe at si.edu slash side door.

We'll also include a photograph of Lena Richard on the set of her cooking show. Our colleagues at the National Museum of African American History and Culture have launched a powerful new web portal called Talking About Race. It provides digital tools tailored for educators, parents, and caregivers, as well as individuals committed to racial equity. We highly recommend taking a look, and we'll link to that in our newsletter as well. Enormous thanks to Ashley Rose Young, whose archival research and interviewing made this episode possible.

Crystal Moten and Ashley Young have co-curated an exhibition called The Only One in the Room, featuring stories of pioneering women in business, including Lena Richard. That exhibition launches digitally this summer. Thanks also to New Orleans chef Dee Levine for bringing Lena Richard's words to life for us. You can find her on social media at D-Lightful Cupcakes. That's D-E-E-Lightful Cupcakes. And thank you to Lily Katzman for bringing this story to our attention. Keep an eye out for Lily's upcoming article about Lena Richard in the Smithsonian Magazine.

Additional thanks to Liz Williams and our colleagues at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, the Newcomb Archives and Vorhoff Library special collections at Tulane University, and to the wonderful Valeska Hilbig. Thanks also to Toni Tipton Martin whose book The Jemima Code helped inform this episode. Oh yes and I almost forgot thanks to our oyster lovers Kathleen and Andrew Waite, Ellie Klein and Nicholas Rodman, PJ Tabot and side door alums Toni Cohn and Jason Orfanon. For more stories of important women in history be sure to look into the Smithsonian American

Women's History Initiative. To learn more, go to womenshistory.si.edu or join the conversation using hashtag because of her story on social media. Our podcast team is Justin O'Neill, Natalie Boyd, Anne Kinnanen, Caitlin Schaeffer, Jess Sadek, Lara Koch, and Sharon Bryant. Episode artwork is by Greg Fisk. Extra support comes from John, Jason, and Genevieve at PRX. Our show is mixed by Tarik Fuda.

Our theme song and other episode music are by Breakmaster Cylinder. If you want to sponsor our show, please email sponsorship at prx.org. I'm your host, Lizzie Peabody. Thanks for listening. How do you know if it burned? Well, eventually you see it turn black, but if you're really bad at it, you can tell right away you just have to start over again, okay?

No doubt about it. Okay.