People in the news

Diana Kennedy

Kennedy spent much of her life learning and preserving the traditional cooking and ingredients of her adopted home, a mission that even in her 80s had her driving hundreds of miles across her adopted country in a rattling truck as she searched remote villages for elusive recipes.

Her nearly dozen cookbooks, including “Oaxaca al Gusto,” which won the 2011 James Beard Award for cookbook of the year, reflect a lifetime of groundbreaking culinary contributions and her effort to collect vanishing culinary traditions, a mission that began long before the rest of the culinary world was giving Mexican cooking the respect she felt it was due.

Her long-time friend Concepción Guadalupe Garza Rodríguez said that Kennedy died peacefully shortly before dawn Sunday at her home in Zitacuaro, about 100 miles west of Mexico City.

“Mexico is very grateful for her,” Garza Rodríguez said. Kennedy had had lunch at a local hotel on March 3 for her birthday, but during the past five weeks had mostly stayed in her room. Garza Rodríguez visited Kennedy last week and said she cried when they parted.

Mexico’s Culture Ministry said via Twitter Sunday that Kennedy’s “life was dedicated to discovering, compiling and preserving the richness of Mexican cuisine.”

“Diana understood as few do, that the conservation of nature is key to continue obtaining the ingredients that make it possible to keep creating the delicious dishes that characterize our cuisine,” the ministry said.

Her first cookbook, “The Cuisines of Mexico,” was written during long hours with home cooks across Mexico. It established Kennedy as the foremost authority on traditional Mexican cooking and remains the seminal work on the subject even four decades later.

She described it as a gastronomy that humbled her and she credited those — usually women — who shared their recipes with her.