Culinary master James Beard possessed the same lifelong passion for cooking and entertaining that many gay men have experienced. He moved in gay circles and had many gay and lesbian friends. But, by most accounts, Beard was unhappy about his homosexuality, partly because he never found the soul mate he longed for.

Born in Portland, Ore., in 1903, Beard was the only child  of middle-aged parents. His British-born mother, Mary, a  former restaurant manager and small-hotel owner, not only tutored him in cooking, but also in shopping for food and presenting beautiful meals. At the family’s summer home on the Oregon coast, Mary furthered her son’s culinary skills by teaching him to prepare and serve meals out-of-doors.

Beard apparently learned more than cooking on the beach. He later claimed that he discovered his homosexuality at the age of 10 by experimenting with other boys on the dunes. During his teenage summers, he progressed to older men, beginning a pattern of brief sexual encounters.

Besides cooking, Mary Beard’s other great love was for the performing arts. She took her son to his first opera when he was 5, and at the age of 12, Beard began acting with Portland theater companies and in school productions, dreaming of a stage career.

In 1920, he entered Reed College, where he cut a flamboyant figure on campus, even appearing at the freshman Halloween party in drag. After the administration discovered that he had been lovers with several male students and at least one professor, Beard was expelled in 1921. (Ironically, the college granted him an honorary degree after he became famous.)

His mother bundled him off to England, and Beard spent the next year traveling and taking voice lessons. In Europe, he found he could more freely explore his sexuality. But when Mary’s finances became strained, she had to bring her son unwillingly home.

For years, Beard continued pursuing his acting ambitions in Portland and New York, but with little luck. He had a powerful speaking voice, but his weight-usually between 250 and 300 pounds-prevented his success. The closest he came to achieving his goal was when he found steady dramatic work on the radio.

By the late 1930s, Beard decided that cooking could earn him a better living than acting. When he met William Rhode, another food maven, at a party, the two teamed up to start a successful catering business called Hors d’Oeuvre, Inc. in New York.

Based on what he learned as a caterer, Beard published his first cookbook, Hors d’Oeuvres and Canapes in 1940. Designed for a new breed of social climbers, the volume included “modern” dishes like deviled eggs-which would soon, thanks to Beard, become de rigueur in middle-class American cuisine. The book also offered tips on how to host a successful cocktail party, like “Have plenty of cigarettes, and not just your own brand.”

After serving briefly in World War II, Beard advanced his career by writing regular articles in Gourmet and other magazines. Then in 1949, his Fireside Cook Book propelled him to stardom among food writers. A lavishly illustrated volume of more than 1,200 recipes, including such varied domestic fare as roasts, spoon bread, and eggs Benedict, the tome was geared toward making American cuisine accessible to cooks of both genders. His goal, Beard wrote, was to create a “truly national cuisine,” one that used primarily fresh, regional ingredients. He did, however, include a chapter on the new rage-frozen foods.

Over the next decades, Beard wrote more than 25 cookbooks on everything from entertaining to casserole cooking to barbecuing. In the 1950s and 1960s, he helped popularize backyard grilling as a “manly” pursuit-perhaps because he himself strived toward “masculine” behavior and showed disdain for “feminine” gay men.

In addition to writing, Beard added to his prosperity by lending endorsements to companies like Green Giant and acting as a consultant to restaurants. Among the establishments he created menus for were the Four Seasons in New York and Windows on the World at the top of the World Trade Center. He also opened a cooking school in his Greenwich Village town house in 1955.

For many years, Beard shared his New York home with his lover, Gino Cofacci, whom he met at a gay-favorite restaurant in the Village in 1956. Cofacci was an architect who was unable to stick to a job. Beard eventually sent him to France to study cooking, and Cofacci became an accomplished pastry chef. The two men hosted many gay soirees at their home, including Thanksgiving dinners with New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne and his lover.

But Beard suffered bouts of depression over his homosexuality and often lamented his inability to find a lover he could really talk to. The relationship between Beard and Cofacci deteriorated in the late 1960s, when Beard could no longer tolerate Cofacci’s neediness. “It is not a companionship where things are shared,” he wrote sadly to a friend. He then fell for his young aide and chauffeur, Carl Jerome; but the relationship was never consummated, because Jerome loved another man.

In his later years, Beard developed coronary disease and, after a serious heart attack, became a proponent of healthful cooking. The turnaround, however, wasn’t enough to compensate for a lifetime of eating rich foods: He died of cardiac arrest on January 23, 1985.