Julia Carolyn Child was an American cooking teacher, author and television personality. He was born on August 15, 1912 and died on August 13, 2004.
Julia Child grew up in a family that had a cook, but learned to cook when she met her husband, Paul, who grew up in a family that was very interested in food.
In World War II she joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) where she was soon given a responsible position as a top secret investigator, working directly for the head of the OSS, General William J. Donovan.
When Julia Child was asked to solve the problem of too many underwater OSS explosives being set off by curious sharks, “her solution was to experiment with cooking various concoctions as shark repellents“, which were sprayed into the water near the explosives and repelled the sharks. The same are still used today. The experimental shark repellant “marked Julia Child’s first contact with the world of cooking…”
In 1951, he graduated from the prestigious Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and later studied privately with Max Bugnard and other master chefs. She joined the women’s cooking club Le Cercle des Gourmettes, through which she met Simone Beck, who was writing a French cookbook for Americans with her friend Louisette Bertholle. Beck suggested she work with Julia Child to make the book more appealing to Americans.
Child, Beck and Bertholle began teaching cooking to American women in Child’s Paris kitchen, calling their informal school L’école des trois gourmandes (The School of the Three Food Lovers).
They would sign a contract with publisher Houghton Mifflin, who later rejected the manuscript because it looked too much like an encyclopedia. Finally, when first published in 1961 by Alfred A. Knopf, the 726-page Mastering the Art of French Cooking became a bestseller and received critical acclaim, stemming in part from American interest in French culture in the early 1960s.
Television shows will follow which will be a great success. Her last book was the autobiography: My Life in France, published posthumously in 2006 and written by her nephew Alex Prud’homme. The book chronicles Child’s life with her husband, Paul Cushing Child, in post-war France.
Some more of her quotes:
- A cookbook is only as good as its poorest recipe.
- You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces—just good food from fresh ingredients.
- If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.
- Always remember: If you’re alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who’s going to know?
- I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.
- Well, all I know is this: Νothing you ever learn is really wasted, and will sometime be used.
- The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.
and much more.
