In case you don't remember the Reverend Smith (he once was an ordained Methodist minister), it was he who gave himself the name The Frugal Gourmet, although exactly how he was frugal was never completely clear.

His contention was that he was sparse with his time in preparing meals. Certainly some of his menus weren't frugal when it came to expense. Although he occasionally sounded off about low-fat food, he wasn't shy about using butter now and then.

In his heyday, the 1990s, he was the darling of the Public Broadcasting System. Over half a dozen years he starred in various versions of his cooking show, and he churned out a string of bestselling cookbooks.

Indeed, he was one of the first and for a while undoubtedly the most popular of the TV chefs who have come to clutter our Saturday mornings on public television.

Julia Child undoubtedly came first, but The Frug was right out there with Jacques Pepin and all the rest who followed.

Indeed, Jeff Smith's popularity probably led to the increasing number of PBS cooking shows. Long before the Food Channel, he was trying to change America's eating and cooking habits.

And change them he did, although, of course, not by himself. Alice Waters pioneered the use of fresh ingredients, an idea endemic to cooking in France and Italy. But until she and The Frug and Julia Child entered public consciousness, Americans were still eating out of cans and defrosting TV dinners.

Just why Jeff Smith was so popular is hard to say. He wasn't good looking. In fact, he was a little odd. He had graying hair, he was going to bald, his voice often sounded like a fingernail being dragged over a blackboard and was far above the normal range of most males and, in truth, he wasn't a master chef.

But he could talk fast and work furiously and he managed each week to cram at least a couple of recipes into his half hour. But few of his recipes were his own. He had collected them or modified them from others.

To be fair, he gave credit to their creators, but what he apparently was trying to do was to adapt the haute cuisine to more modest American requirements.

His dishes seldom took long to prepare. They weren't fancy and they sometimes even tasted pretty good.

He also had a variety of prejudices: he fancied a Turkish coffee grinder as a way to grind fresh pepper and urged everyone to go find one somewhere. He used a wire whisk (so did Julia), and there was a run on American wire whisks that still has not completely abated. For a while he insisted garlic had to be squeezed in a garlic press. Later, to save time, he prechopped it and stored it in the refrigerator, thus saving at least three or four minutes.

Pans, he always advised, should be hot before oil was added and Chinese and Italian cooking were the bases—in the gospel according to Smith—of all cuisine. In that he might be right.

His Italian and Chinese recipes, however, were hardly classic and more American than the countries that had inspired them.

Even less commendable were the recipes he included in a book on colonial American cooking, and his Italian cookbook wasn't much either, according to some Italians.

Smith got his start in a restaurant he owned in the town where he was once a minister, Tacoma, Wash. But the television show quickly took over his life.

He traveled to Italy and Greece with a film crew, sometimes with his wife, Patty, and occasionally his two sons. One year he also ran a show in which school-age children invaded his kitchen and helped out—although not without a lot of squeaky instruction.

In later years he also acquired a young assistant, Craig, who got a few minutes on each show to do his thing or help with whatever the Rev. Smith had in mind.

The Frug's sons were, like him, tall and lean, but his wife sometimes looked as if she had sampled too much of his cooking. Whatever their connection with The Frug, all these folks and a growing assemblage of chefs and cooks from other PBS shows appeared in his half hour. He was all over PBS—one of their stars. Except for Julia's, his was perhaps the most-watched cooking show on the channel.

And then suddenly it all ended.

Several men, all of whom claimed to have worked for or had known the Rev. Smith in earlier times, filed suit against him, charging sexual improprieties. The Frug's contract for a new series of cooking shows was abruptly withdrawn and all mention of him disappeared from PBS promotional material.

Smith retired to Tacoma, issued only the briefest of public statements and for the rest of his life remained silent. An aide turned aside all requests for interviews. All he would say was that The Frug was happy and enjoying his retirement.

And then last week he died, not yet in his 70s. His heart quit.

Or maybe it was broken.

Even before he began appearing on television he had had trouble with it.

His death brought a brief mention in the obituary columns, with most of the information I've written above.

But not from PBS.

PBS made not a mention of his passing.