She was born in 1881 in the house of Dimitrij Djurić, Minister of War and member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences. His maternal grandfather was Dimitrije Matić, doctor of philosophy and minister of justice.
At the age of 15, she went to Vienna, to the School for Ladies, the best that existed at the time, where girls learned to be ladies and housewives. At that time, it was considered (quite correctly) that a lady must have the appearance and behavior on the street and in society, but also that her house and table look neat and warm.
When she returned to Belgrade, she married an officer and opened her own school for young ladies. It was a matter of prestige for the girl to finish Patina's school.
What is her huge contribution and pioneering work is the introduction of education and knowledge about food, its nutritional values, balanced diet, keeping and storing food, nutrition for the sick and children. She enriched Serbian cuisine with recipes where she combined old Serbian recipes with Viennese additives and modern knowledge about the values of food.
As a woman, she had no way of expressing her protest against the dictatorship of King Alexander, who dissolved the Assembly in 1929, banned the work of all political parties and introduced the blackest censorship. . Vigilant agents (today called bots) did not miss that, and Spasenija's cookbook is the only book on cooking that was banned by the authorities.
After the war, the liberators identified themselves as traitors and liberated all property, including the house where she hid Jews. Everything she ever wrote was forbidden. She was occasionally invited to teach, almost secretly, former young partisans who had become the new, communist bourgeoisie, how to cook and serve food.
She died in 1974, poor and forgotten.
This culinary book was published in 1939 under the title "My Chef", and later it was better known as "Pat's Chef". In 1956, the publishing company Narodna knjiga published "Veliki narodni kuvar" according to "Patin kuvar", which had over 20 editions. The introduction to this edition reads: "This book is based on the famous book 'My Cook', which was published by 'Politika' before the war, and edited by Spasenija-Pata Marković." The great national chef contains all the recipes of the pre-war edition of the mentioned book, along with some other tips, and almost every house in our former state had or still has the same chef, inherited from newer editions. When women left their homeland, they carried it with them all over the world, kept it as a treasure, and left it as a legacy to their daughters, or daughters-in-law, born far from this hilly Balkans, abroad, so as not to forget the cuisine of their roots. The chef often bowed as a wedding or engagement gift to young couples.
She was so brave to enrich Serbian cuisine and wrote all about it. Good chefs are always valuable and their position isn't understand and glorified in period of food lack. Research of different ingredients to get some healthy food with all nutrition collection is most precious for that time and even now when we read that book.