Who was television's first cooking star? If you guessed Julia Child, you must be forgetting Dione Lucas! This week on A Taste of the Past, Linda Pelaccio is joined in the studio by Australian author and food historian Jill Adams to talk about the life of Dione Lucas. Also in the studio is Margaret Happel Perry, the president of the New York chapter of Les Dames d'Escoffier. Tune into this episode to find out why Dione Lucas has not necessarily been remembered favorably. How did Dione Lucas help popularize television in Australia? Learn how the advertising schemes of the 1950s have made it impossible to syndicate Dione Lucas' cooking shows. This program has been sponsored by Bonnie Plants. Thanks to The California Honeydrops for today's musical break.

"She absolutely insisted that the food be genuine. It was great, and something our readers really connected with." [8:45]

-- Margaret Happel Perry on A Taste of the Past

"I think that you tell a great story by dragging things out of the closet. There are a lot of things unknown about Dione Lucas." [12:50]

-- Jill Adams on A Taste of the Past

This week A Taste of The Past investigates the rise in popularity and power of TV cooking shows. Host Linda Pelaccio looks into the origins that have resulted in today's obsession with food TV, with hundreds of shows on a multitude of dedicated food and cooking networks, they find the catalyst in the impossibly original and witty Julia Child. With the help of NYU Cinema Studies professor Dana Polan, who has written a book about the subject, discover how Julia transformed America's views of home cooking and made us enamored of French cuisine. From her refusal to use any product placement to harnessing the power of PBS, learn about this food icon and the food media empire she help give birth to. This episode is sponsored by Whole Foods Market.

Kathleen Collins, author of Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows, talks about the past, present and future of food television.