Jacques Pépin

Jacques Pépin (born December 18, 1935, Bourg-en-Bresse, France) is a French chef, television personality, and culinary educator. He is the author of more than 30 books, including La Technique (1976), widely regarded as one of the most important cookbooks of the 20th century. Pépin has won numerous awards as a cooking show host, including a daytime Emmy Award and a James Beard Foundation award for best national cooking show for Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home (1999–2000)—a program with fellow chef Julia Child. In 2016 he established the Jacques Pépin Foundation to support culinary arts training programs for individuals in underserved communities, including those experiencing homelessness, in recovery, and adversely impacted by the justice system.

Early life and career in France

Pépin was born in 1935 in Bourg-en-Bresse, near the city of Lyon, France. As a child, he helped his parents at their restaurant, Le Pélican, preparing family recipes and French classics using local ingredients. When he was 13 years old, Pépin apprenticed at Grand Hôtel de l’Europe, an esteemed restaurant in Bourg-en-Bresse. There, he plucked chickens, scaled fish, and tended to the restaurant’s stove—an approximately 15-by-8-foot (4.6-by-2.4 meter) behemoth that required a steady diet of paper, wood, and coal. Pépin cooked his first meal for a diner at age 14: a chicken from Bresse—a region renowned for its poultry—sautéed in tarragon and cream.

A few years later, at 17, Pépin moved to Paris and worked in renowned French restaurants, including Plaza Athénée (where he trained under chef Lucien Diat), Maxim’s, and Fouquet’s. In 1956 he was drafted into the French navy. During that period in France, all draftees were required to serve in the Algerian War. However, because his brother was already serving and the navy avoided sending two siblings to combat roles at the same time, Pépin was assigned to work at the French Admiralty in Paris. By the time he was released from his service in 1959, Pépin had served as a chef for three heads of state, including Charles de Gaulle, who became president in 1959, the same year that Pépin left the navy and moved to the United States.

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French chef in the United States

In the United States, Pépin worked at Le Pavillon in New York City and joined the city’s vibrant food community, becoming friends with author and educator James Beard, food writer Craig Claiborne, and his future costar, Julia Child. Beginning in 1960 he served as director of research and development for the chain hotel and restaurant Howard Johnson’s, a position he held for 10 years. Throughout Pépin’s time at the company, he also studied at Columbia University, graduating in 1972 with a master’s degree in 18th-century French literature. He married his wife, Gloria Augier, in 1966.

Pépin left Howard Johnson’s in 1970 to open a soup restaurant, La Potagerie, and, in the mid-’70s, he managed food operations and opened the commissary at the World Trade Center. After breaking his back and fracturing his hip in a car accident in 1974, Pépin switched his focus from restaurants to writing, culinary education, and television work.

Author, television chef, and educator

In 1976 Pépin published La Technique: An Illustrated Guide to the Fundamental Techniques of Cooking, a cookbook featuring step-by-step instructions to 170 cooking skills and procedures, ranging from simple techniques such as washing greens to advanced ones such as layering a sweetbread terrine. In 2024 The New York Times Style Magazine named the book, which includes more than 1,500 photos, as one of the 25 most influential books of the last century. La Technique and its 1979 follow-up, La Methode, were inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame in 1996. Pépin published an autobiography, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, in 2003. Throughout his career, he has published more than 30 books, including Art of the Chicken: A Master Chef’s Paintings, Stories, and Recipes of the Humble Bird (2022), which he also illustrated. Pépin was a columnist for The New York Times and published a quarterly column in Food & Wine magazine.

Pépin’s first television series—Everyday Cooking with Jacques Pépin—began airing on PBS in 1982 and would be the first of many. From 1999 to 2000, he starred alongside his close friend Julia Child in Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home—the show received both a daytime Emmy Award and a James Beard Foundation award for best national cooking show in 2001. Pépin collaborated with his daughter, Claudine Pépin, on four shows: Jacques Pépin’s Kitchen: Cooking with Claudine (1996), Jacques Pépin’s Kitchen II: Encore with Claudine (1998), Jacques Pépin Celebrates (2001), and Jacques Pépin Heart & Soul (2015).

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Beyond his television work, Pépin has been a leader in culinary education. In 1982 he became the dean of special programs at New York City’s French Culinary Institute (now known as the International Culinary Center). The following year, he began a longtime engagement as a faculty member at Boston University (BU), and he later founded, along with Child, BU’s professional culinary arts certificate program and a master’s degree program in gastronomy. In 2003 he became the executive culinary director of Oceania Cruises, a position he held until 2024 when he transitioned to an advisory role.

Jacques Pépin Foundation and awards

In 2016 Jacques Pépin, Claudine Pépin, and Claudine’s husband, Rollie Wesen, launched the Jacques Pépin Foundation. The foundation “supports free culinary and life skills training, through community based organizations, that helps individuals detached from the workforce gain confidence, skills, and employment in food service.”

Pépin has been awarded a number of French and American accolades, including France’s highest civilian honor, becoming a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 2004, and lifetime achievement awards from the James Beard Foundation (2005) and American Public Television (2015).