Scott Peacock

Scott Peacock (1963- ) is an award-winning chef and culinary author whose work has helped shape the contemporary southern food scene. He is known for his emphasis on regional and heirloom ingredients and his notable collaboration with renowned southern chef and author Edna Lewis. After a successful career in Atlanta, he relocated to the Black Belt region to continue his work in food history and community foodways. His cultural stewardship has helped to preserve Alabama’s unique culinary identity.

Peacock was born in 1963 in Hartford, Geneva County, to Dorothy and Franklin Peacock; he has one sister. His parents ran a business catering to farms in the area. The family’s work balanced the conveniences of modern supermarkets with a deep appreciation for fresh, locally grown foods. His earliest influences came from the home cooks around him, including both his mother and his paternal grandmother, “Grandmother Peacock.” Hartford’s largely agrarian economy, shaped by peanut farms, home gardens, and seasonal produce markets, exposed him to a wide range of local ingredients. His family’s reliance on preserving foods and home baking provided him with a foundational awareness of southern home cooking and its importance.

Peacock attended Geneva County High School in Hartford and Florida State University, where he initially studied music. He did not attend culinary school, but, in early 1987, he began his culinary career as a pastry chef at the Tallahassee, Florida, restaurant The Golden Pheasant, where he received his initial training in the technical and creative aspects of restaurant cooking. He followed this job with a brief stint at Gillionville Hunting Plantation in Albany, Georgia. In early December 1987, he was offered a job as the chef at the Georgia governor’s mansion; he remained for four years and under two administrations. This position allowed him to oversee menus for official state events, which provided the opportunity to present recipes honoring regional traditions through elevated interpretations of the dishes.

Although he was enamored early on by his mother’s dog-eared copies of Julia Child’s French cookbooks and the cosmopolitan lure of Italian cuisine, it was the renowned southern chef Edna Lewis who encouraged him to focus on the familiar. One of the leading voices in southern cuisine, Lewis was well known for the groundbreaking cookbook The Taste of Country Cooking. Peacock met Virginia native Lewis in 1988 at a gala held in the governor’s mansion, and the two bonded over the common childhood food memories that reflected their mutual agricultural heritages. Although separated in age by nearly four decades, the two quickly became close friends and collaborators. Peacock frequently visited her in New York, and in 1989, she began to visit Atlanta as they began to work more closely together. In the late 1980s, Lewis and Peacock founded the Society for the Revival and Preservation of Southern Food, which was created to document and celebrate the food culture of the south; it was later absorbed into the Southern Foodways Alliance. In 1992, Lewis moved to Atlanta, and four years later and moved into Peacock’s home there. The two collaborated on the 2003 cookbook The Gift of Southern Cooking, which came as a result of the pair testing, refining, and documenting recipes. The book was praised for its precision, scholarship, and preservation of traditional techniques, which solidified the pair’s influence on modern food chefs and writers. Peacock cared for Lewis in her final years until her death in 2006.

Peacock became a major figure in the Atlanta food scene after his departure from the governor’s mansion in 1991. In 1994, he helped develop the Horseradish Grill, known for its fresh approach to southern cuisine. In 1998, he joined the Watershed restaurant in Decatur, Georgia, as the executive chef, serving for more than a decade. Watershed became one of the South’s most prominent restaurants, and Peacock began receiving national attention. His tenure coincided with a renewed interest in southern cuisine, and he became one of the movement’s noted authorities. His recipes and dishes, especially his biscuits, were often prominently featured in culinary publications. In 2007, Peacock earned a James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Southeast, one of the highest awards in cooking. In 2010, he left Watershed to pursue teaching and writing opportunities.

In 2010, Peacock purchased an 1830s house on an acre of land in Marion, Perry County, in Alabama’s Black Belt region; he fully relocated to Marion in 2016. Peacock had become infatuated with the landscape in the two years prior while working on a video project interviewing locals about their food memories. Fellow Alabama author and Marion resident Mary Ward Brown, as well as the captivating history and his fascination of the area, ultimately convinced him to stay. 

In January 2019, Peacock partnered with local philanthropist Hunter Lewis to develop an intimate hands-on biscuit-making workshop that operates out of the nineteenth-century mansion known as Reverie in Marion, which is also owned by Lewis. Dubbed a “Biscuit Experience,” the seminar combines Peacock’s own stories with the complex cultural landscape of the area, and the immersive experience transports participants from Marion’s beginnings through the civil rights era, weaving historical significance with recipe instruction. The experience integrates culinary instruction with reflections on agricultural history and food traditions. Peacock’s program has been featured in national magazines, newspapers, and television programs.

Peacock has also worked with Bois D’Arc (BDA) Farm, a 6,000-acre organic farm in Uniontown, Perry County, on its prior work with Purple Straw wheat, a pest resistant strain predominant in the Virginia Piedmont region that is believed to be one of the first flours used for biscuits in America. Peacock’s interest in its revitalization was inspired by Edna Lewis’s early life in Orange County, Virginia. Peacock has also taken an interest in the farm's development of the Pineywood breed of cattle, a now rare breed introduced to the Americas by the Spanish in the sixteenth century. 

Peacock has made multiple television appearances, including The Martha Stewart Show and TODAY. His biscuit recipe was also named one of the “40 Best Recipes Ever Published” by Food & Wine. His active presence in the Black Belt region has renewed interest in food traditions and heirloom ingredients through the lens of storytelling in culinary preservation. He has also been a regular contributor to Better Homes & Gardens magazine as both a columnist and an editor, eagerly introducing readers to his southern food memories and traditions.