Jackie Kennedy was so “furious” when her recipes were published in a Weight Watchers’ print magazine in March 1968 that she fired her personal chef, according to newly revealed details published in the book “This is Big.”
The 38-year-old former first lady canned her chef, Annemarie Huste — who two years earlier signed an agreement not to write about the famous first family — after she spilled the beans in the article titled, “Jackie Kennedy’s Gourmet Chef Presents Her Weight Watchers Recipes.”
Kennedy “was furious — she felt like it was a Jackie diet that she hadn’t endorsed and didn’t want to,” reads an excerpt from the book, that was also published in Town & Country. “She summoned her lawyers to try to get the piece stopped but they had learned of it when the issue was already in print.”
In the article, Huste revealed the recipes for “lemon broiled chicken, Spanish melon, raspberries à l’orange, baked tomatoes, and a Bibb salad with just lettuce, parsley, chives, tarragon, and some fresh lemon juice squeezed on top.”
Huste hired the infamous attorney, Roy Cohn, as legal counsel, in fear of her slender boss. “I was so humiliated and furious,” Huste told a journalist at the time. “I called my lawyer and he told me to just apologize to Mrs. Kennedy.”
Kennedy blasted Huste over the phone saying, “You should have known better.”
Shortly after their phone call, The Post declared Huste’s cooking was to credit for Kennedy dropping two dress sizes.
“Huste passed a newsstand and saw a copy of the New York Post proclaiming her cooking was responsible for Kennedy dropping two dress sizes,” – she denied her participation in the story, telling reporters “It was all made up and I was scared to death.”
Kennedy was furious Huste spoke with the press.
Huste soon called Kennedy secretary Nancy Tuckerman, who told her, “Under the circumstances Mrs. Kennedy felt you had better not come back to work.”
Her tenure as Kennedy’s chef came to an abrupt end.
