Legendary cook and teacher Julia Child (1912–2004) had a tremendous impact on food and culinary history in America. Through her books and television series, which spanned forty years, she encouraged people to care about food and cooking. She inspired many Americans to conquer their fears of the unfamiliar and to expand their ideas about ingredients and flavors, tools and techniques, and meals in general. Aside from her most famous creation, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Child wrote more than a dozen cookbooks. Mastering the Art of French Cooking was first published in 1961 and her TV career began two years later. She married a diplomat, Paul Child, in 1946 and the couple moved to France in 1948 after Paul accepted a job in Paris. Their first stop was a restaurant called La Couronne in Rouen, Normandy. Julia ordered sole meunière and this classic French dish launched Julia’s ultimate culinary destiny. The meal proved to be life-changing, sparking her culinary curiosity and a desire to learn French cooking. “It was the most exciting meal of my life,” she wrote in her book “My Life in France“.
Julia wasn’t born with a wooden spoon in her hand – it took time to learn her way around the kitchen. Julia loved the idea of cooking, but she wasn’t what anyone would call a natural. Yet living in Paris, surrounded by the sights and smells of the outdoor markets, the colorful produce, and the bistros serving rich and buttery sauces, she couldn’t help but be inspired. At age 37, Julia enrolled in classes at the famous Le Cordon Bleu culinary school – a male-dominated school where an American woman seemed completely out of place. She quickly proved she belonged there.
Juila met Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle after joining a cooking club. The three cooks began teaching French cooking to Americans living in Paris before writing volume 1 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. When the book was first released in 1961, after nearly a decade of work, it started a revolution. No single cookbook has influenced more chefs or inspired more home cooks to try something ambitious, authentic, and refined on their own. It changed the face of food writing as well, with its precisely detailed instructions and ingredient lists. As Child herself says in the introduction, ‘If you can read, you can cook”.
Julia was also a crucial contributor to the development of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and the American Institute of Wine and Food. She was a trailblazer for today’s chefs, and for women in particular. She published several cookbooks and hosted a number of television shows. It is fair to say she was the first celebrity chef. In 2002, the Smithsonian Institution honored Julia by installing the kitchen from her Cambridge, Massachusetts home in the National Museum of American History. The exhibit first opened for Julia’s 90th birthday. This exhibition features the actual kitchen, including the cabinets, appliances, cookbooks, kitchen table, and hundreds of utensils and gadgets from the late 1940s, when Julia Child began her life in food, through to 2001. Julia was a self-proclaimed “gadget and knife freak.”
Julia Child approached food with the same gusto that she approached love, fearlessly and whole-heartedly. At a time when convenience foods were all the rage for their microwave-to-table ease, Julia celebrated the art of making a meal properly from scratch.
It’s been claimed Julia Child actually considered The Way to Cook as her finest cookbook. Written in the late 1980s, The Way to Cook also includes American recipes and made greater use of modern technologies, such as food processors, than her previous cookbooks.
The movie Julie & Julia is a 2009 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Nora Ephron starring Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, Amy Adams, and Chris Messina. The film contrasts the life of chef Julia Child in the early years of her culinary career with the life of young New Yorker Julie Powell, who aspires to cook all 524 recipes in Child’s first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in 365 days. Ephron’s screenplay is adapted from two books: My Life in France, Child’s autobiography written with Alex Prud’homme, and a memoir by Powell documenting online her daily experiences while cooking each of the 524 recipes. Both of these books were written and published in the same time frame (2004 to 2006).
Meryl Streep won a Golden Globe for her performance as Julia Child in the movie Julie & Julia (2009) and was nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for the same movie.
