12 Of Audrey Hepburn's Favorite Foods

Audrey Hepburn, the iconic actress of Hollywood's Golden Age, captivated audiences with her timeless elegance and grace, but also with her great passion for food. Off the silver screen, she cultivated a reputation as a fervent food lover, a facet of her personality that endeared her to fans and lived on in her son Luca Dotti. Dotti published "Audrey at Home: Memories of My Mother's Kitchen" in 2015, a book about his mother in which he recounts their family life with particular attention to dining and recipes.

It's only fair that she should have indulged in satisfying her palate in her later years given what she'd had to endure in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands as a child. There she and her family subsisted on tulip bulbs and boiled grass during a famine induced by Nazi policies. Since then, Hepburn showcased a hearty appetite for the finer foods in life, including hefty pasta dishes and sushi. Indeed, she was known for having an adventurous palate and embracing different cuisines and flavors with gusto, which she did both in restaurants and in her home cooking. Let's look at which dishes struck her fancy and perhaps learn a tip or two about how to prepare good, simple meals worthy of an international movie star.

A nice, rich slice of chocolate cake is one of those things few people can turn down. There is something incredibly appealing about its rich flavor and creamy texture, even for people who might not normally favor chocolate. So it should come as no surprise that chocolate cake was a favorite food of our heroine.

Indeed, she liked it so much that she even had a favored recipe for chocolate cake, fine-tuned to suit her preferences. The recipe for the flourless cake served with whipped cream and ice cream and topped with powdered sugar was published in her son's book about the actress. What's special about this cake, other than that it comes from Hepburn, is that it contains no flour and plenty of chocolate. So in addition to being gluten-free, it also provides a more intense chocolate taste than a regular chocolate cake. For this reason, we recommend using very high-quality chocolate to make her recipe.

One would think that someone as sophisticated as Audrey Hepburn would disdain common American condiments, but there was one she was willing to use in copious amounts, including as a topping for her pasta — ketchup. She loved it so much, she even gave it to her son, according to an interview he gave to the Associated Press.

While many of us food snobs might look down on pasta with ketchup, the dish is a testament to Hepburn's approachability and down-to-earth style, which was something not a lot of Golden Age celebrities could claim for themselves. Indeed, this was part of what allowed her to cement her reputation as a warm host, consummate home entertainer, and as her son described her in that same Associated Press article, someone who "simply liked food as a way to get her family together."

It may be hard to believe, but Audrey Hepburn loved pasta and ate it almost daily. While sometimes this did involve nothing but ketchup as a topping, she also elevated many of her pasta dishes with ingredients she grew in her garden, like basil, a prime ingredient in pesto. Not unsurprisingly, she also had a reliable pesto recipe.

Her pasta passion was so complete that she even packed it in her suitcase when she went on vacation, as the story goes. While that may seem extreme, we must remember that even up until 1993, when the actress passed away, it wasn't always possible to get good quality pasta everywhere in the world. Even parts of the United States were sadly bereft, at least in good quality form. This was especially true of good olive oil and cheese, which she reportedly also packed in her suitcase.

Hutspot may sound more like a modern-day co-working space than something you'd eat, but it's actually a traditional Dutch food, and Hepburn loved it.  While she's more known as a British subject and a Hollywood movie star, she was born in Belgium to a Dutch mother, so it's natural she would have sampled some of her motherland's cuisine.

And once you get to know hutspot, you might come to think of it as a favorite, too. The dish is essentially mashed potatoes with carrots and onions, which are also mashed and mixed in with the main ingredient. It is often served with beef, pork, or sausage. So next time you go to make mashed potatoes, why not turn it into hutspot? At the very least, it'll mean you won't have to make a separate vegetable, as the carrots and onions will have already taken care of that part.

Liver is often synonymous with unpleasant or insignificant, as in, "What am I, chopped liver?" so it's no wonder it has gained a notorious reputation over the years. Hepburn might have disagreed, though, since she was a fan of Venetian-style liver, which is made with an abundance of onions and is known in Italy as "fegato alla Veneziana."

To make it, Hepburn's son Luca offers a few tips in his book, as reported in Gulf News: "Timing is everything with fegato alla Veneziana. Cook it just a moment too long and the meat becomes tough and inedible." Aside from being a great tip, the information may explain why many people hate liver: It often gets overcooked. But if you get it right, be sure to serve it with mashed potatoes or polenta –- something to soak up the delicious juices created by the liver and onions. Follow this classic liver and onions recipe by our recipe developer Susan Olayinka if you want to try cooking liver.

While scotch is not technically a food, it can certainly be used as an ingredient, and most of all, it can take pride of place in a meal by lending itself to the closing act. Finishing a big, hearty meal with a nice neat scotch, as Hepburn took it, always seems to hit the spot. She preferred that drink to be a smoky J&B Rare Blended Scotch, and she'd enjoy a finger or two each night as she smoked a Kent cigarette.

If you're inclined to take up the same habit, there is no need to include the cigarette, and luckily, Hepburn's favorite scotch can be purchased for little more than $20 from most retailers. But if you want to take it a notch further, several other types of whiskeys might be better suited to a sophisticated palate. The best place to start is by perusing our list of best whiskeys for beginners.