CHILD, JULIA 1912-

Cook

A Cultural Icon

Julia Child taught millions of Americans to enjoy French cuisine with her popular cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961), and a second volume published in 1970. Her Public Broadcasting System (PBS) program, The French Chef, began in 1963 on Boston's WGBH station and was quickly syndicated and endlessly rebroadcast. By the mid 1970s Julia Child was a popular-culture icon, an imposing (over six feet tall) WASP Francophile matron bustling expertly around a studio kitchen. Her next book, From Julia Child's Kitchen (1975), reflected her celebrity status and witty persona. She won an Emmy in 1966 and many honors from culinary organizations at home and abroad.

Secret Agent Cook

Julia Child was, however, a cook with a difference. Born in Pasadena and educated at Smith College, she was an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agent, with assignments that took her all over the world. In Paris she was one of the first American women to attend the Cordon Bleu culinary school. Not content with a domestic life when she settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1950s, Child brought her gastronomic skills from the home to television. At a time when increasing numbers of educated, affluent feminists rejected the traditional domestic role, Julia Child made fine cooking chic. With peerless showmanship and affable sophistication, she proved the modern woman (and man) could be professional at work and at home.

Sources:

Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, and Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (New York: Knopf, 1961);

Julia Child, From Julia Child's Kitchen (New York: Knopf, 1975).

Julia Child 1912–2004, American cooking teacher, author, and television personality, b. Pasadena, Calif., as Julia Carolyn McWilliams. In the early 1940s both she and her husband-to-be, Paul Child, served in the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C., Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and China. She learned French cooking while her husband (married 1946) was in the diplomatic service in Paris during the late 1940s. In 1961, Child, Simone Beck, and Louisette Bertholle wrote Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the first practical and comparatively accessible such cookbook for an American audience. Shortly thereafter, she began hosting a series of educational television programs; the best known, The French Chef (1963–76), transformed her into an Emmy-winning public-broadcasting star. Child's relaxed, straightforward manner made preparing French cuisine seem less intimidating, and her books and programs helped to change American styles of cooking and eating as well as American attitudes toward food. Her many other cookbooks include From Julia Child's Kitchen (1975) and The Way to Cook (1989). Child's kitchen was dismantled and permanently installed in the Smithsonian Institution.

Bibliography: See her My Life in France (2006, with A. Prud'homme); biographies by N. R. Fitch (1997) and L. Shapiro (2007); N. V. Barr, Backstage with Julia (2007); J. Conant, A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS (2011).