Born in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong to a Russian father and Iraqi mother,[4] who met and married in Shanghai.

[6] At the age of eighteen, Patent had entered into the Pillsbury Bake-Off and won second prize in the junior division.

However, with his parents' aspirations of him becoming an engineer or scientist, Patent studied and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Ph.D. in Zoology and began a career in academia.

He worked as a teacher at the University of Montana in Missoula for ten years and later began writing a weekly food column for the local paper, the Missoulian, and also hosted a 30-minute cooking show that was taped in his home kitchen.

The owners of Cuisinarts, Inc., Carl Sontheimer, and his wife, Shirley, hired Patent as their national spokesperson.