Famous Frug: Jeff Smith

Long before “Frugal Gourmet” made it to our small screens as a segment in Primetime Morning, the moniker belonged to Jeff Smith.

The original Frugal Gourmet was a TV cooking programme that ran for 14 years, from 1983 to 1997, predating Martha Stewart. Smith, the “Frug”, was called "the most visible gourmet" of the 1980s by Time magazine. He was part of a movement to get Americans shop for, prepare and appreciate food. More specifically, low budget cookery.

He also wrote 12 books, which is how I got introduced to him - at the bargain bin of Borders. The 12 books he wrote sold more than 7 million copies, and his first two books occupied the No. 1 and No. 2 spots on the New York Times best-seller list simultaneously, and by 1992 he had sold more cookbooks than any other author.

While the Frug hit great heights, his career skidded to a halt over claims that he had sexually assaulted young men. Three civil suits were filed in 1997 by eight men. One was dismissed, while Smith settled the other cases before they went to trial. He always protested his innocence, but his career was over, hence the bargain bin.

Whether or not the allegations were true is still debatable, with one man’s word against another, and nothing said before Smith attained fame and fortune. One thing is sure though – he wrote good books, and the persona behind the writing was generous, and frugal. This is not a contradiction.

Smith’s generosity came across in his readiness to acknowledge the sources of his recipes. In the acknowledgements section of one book, he says he notes that “the list is long, but each name is important.”

He gave little introductions to each recipe, in which he mentioned restaurants, magazines, and individuals, from which he picked up the dish, sometimes giving the method verbatim from the grandmother, say, who passed him the recipe.

In these introductions, he passed on little nuggets of information about the culture that gave rise to the food. In introducing Scottish eggs, for example, he declares: “I do not like the remark about the Scots being cheap. They are not cheap, they are frugal. They waste nothing, a trait that Americans should certainly admire.”

It was only in Smith’s books that recipes would include the admonition to “save the poaching liquids for another use.” Compare that with the usual “drain after poaching” from other, less frugal, books.

Smith passed away in 2004, but he still has his fans – one website, http://www.recipezaar.com/cookbook.php?bookid=34702&ls=o&pg=3 posts his recipes, and has drawn responses. Some of his programmes are even available for loan from our National Library.

Check them out some time.