CHILD, Julia

Born 15 August 1912, Pasadena, California

Daughter of John and Carolyn Weston McWilliams; married Paul Child, 1945

Author and television's French Chef, Julia Child coauthored the influential and bestselling Mastering the Art of French Cooking (2 vols. 1961, 1970). She thereby translated French culinary techniques into an American idiom and established the standards for authoritative culinary writing in what has become known as America's gastronomical coming of age.

Enrolled in Smith College by her mother when she was born, Child majored in history and received her B.A. in 1934. Although she aspired to become either a basketball star or a novelist, she accepted a copywriting position at the W. & J. Sloane department store and lived in New York for three years before returning to the leisurely life of Pasadena and its Junior League in 1937. When World War II began, Child went to Washington to work as a typist in a government information agency. After six months, she joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the precursor to the CIA), opted for duty in the Far East, and was in charge of document centers in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and later in China.

While in Ceylon, she met Paul Child, a former painter and language teacher, who designed war rooms for the OSS in the Far East. After the war they married and lived in Washington, D.C. until Paul was assigned to the American Embassy in Paris in 1948 as the exhibits officer for the U.S. Information Agency.

During the next four years in Paris, Child took French lessons at Berlitz, studied with Max Bugnard, Claude Thillmont, and Pierre Mangelette at the Cordon Bleu, and at the suggestion of Simone Beck became a member of an exclusive society of women known as Le Cercle des Gourmettes. "From the beginning, I fell in love with everything I saw," Child said. Her life was irrevocably changed by the experience of living in France.

Child's culinary career began when a group of American friends asked her to give cooking lessons in her Left Bank apartment. Assisted by Simone Beck, Louise Bertholle, and chefs from the Cordon Bleu, the classes developed into L'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes. When Child's husband was reassigned to the American embassies in Marseille, Bonn, and Oslo, classes were taught whenever and wherever they could be arranged. The school was so successful that the two Frenchwomen invited Child to collaborate in the writing of a cookbook adapting French culinary techniques to American ingredients and kitchens. Eight years in preparation, the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published by Knopf in 1961, one year after Child's husband had retired and the Childs were established in their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The book was hailed by the New York Times as "the finest volume on French cooking ever published in English," and widely praised by the culinary establishment. Invited to appear on a book reviewing program at WGBH, Boston's educational television station, Child demonstrated beating egg whites with a balloon whisk as she talked about her book. Letters requesting more of the same led to The French Chef series that premiered on 11 February 1963. More than 200 shows were added to the original series of 26 black-and-white programs during the next nine years. Child had invented the theater of cooking; "Julia" had become a household name.

After the publication of The French Chef Cookbook in 1968, three subsequent television series were the basis for From Julia Child's Kitchen (1975), Julia Child and Company (1978), and Julia Child and More Company (1979). Recipes and techniques from four years of monthly Parade magazine articles, six one-hour videocassettes called The Way to Cook, segments from the television program Good Morning America, and the Dinner at Julia's television series contributed to the comprehensive cookbook The Way to Cook (1989). Over more than 40 years Child has developed the techniques to master fine cooking and fulfilled the joint possibilities of television and culinary instruction.

Recognition as a television celebrity tends to deflect attention from Child's writing. Her many books, however, force their readers to reexamine the canon, to look at culinary writing as a genre with its own potential for excellence. She has insisted that each book be a "teaching" book rather than a collection of recipes. In the later books, however, her Olympian tone about utensils has given way to an informal and personalized discussion of options.

Child's favorite book is From Julia Child's Kitchen, because she says, "It is entirely my own, written the way I wanted to do it." Indeed, the book resonates with the truest authorial voice and tells the most compelling stories of all of her books. The reader comes to know the narrator intimately, her voice inspires confidence, and every recipe becomes the beginning of a plot in whose denouement the reader participates.

Yet the book that represents the culmination of Child's career, however, is The Way to Cook. She breaks with conventional organization by structuring the chapters around master recipes, provides over 600 color photographs to illustrate the methods employed, and blends classic techniques with freestyle American cooking. The award-winning book is her magnum opus, and the distinction it has achieved ranks with the Peabody (1965) and Emmy (1966) awards and the Careme Medal (1974) that have also celebrated her culinary career.

Even well into her 80s, Child continues to produce books that are highly prized for their helpfulness and down-to-earth handling of sometimes complicated cooking techniques. In Cooking with Master Chefs (1993), Child introduces the average cook to 16 of America's top chefs with an accompanying lesson on each one's prized recipes. A PBS television series covering the same topics followed shortly after the book's release. Following along the same line, In Julia Child's Kitchen with Master Chefs (1995) features 26 chefs from the U.S.'s top restaurants, but this time right in Child's Cambridge, Massachusetts, kitchen. In typical fashion, the creation of the specialty dishes was captured for the television audience. Sidebars and special explanations in the book again simplify the preparation and adapt the restaurant meals to the home dining room.

With recipes formerly featured in Julia Child and Company and Julia Child and More Company, Child pulls together a tutorial on menu planning in Julia's Delicious Little Dinners (1998). With depth she leads the reader through six dinners for six and suggests occasions to use each menu. A similar book published with Little Dinners is Julia's Menus for Special Occasions (1998). The recipes are from the same source and also include six dinner plans for six, but focus on special dinner party situations such as buffets, cocktail parties, and serving low fat or vegetarian fare.

Nearing 90, Child continues to guide American eating traditions through both her books and her television tutorials.

Other Works:

Julia Child's Menu Cookbook (reprinted, 1991).

Julia Child's papers (professional and personal correspondence, scripts and proofs, fan letters, research notes, and various newspaper and magazine articles) are at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Bibliography:

Chase, Chris, The Great American Waistline (1981). Fitch, N. R., Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child (1997). Fussell, Betty, Masters of American Cookery (1983). Booklist (15 April 1995). New Yorker (23 Dec. 1974). There also hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles from 1963 to 1999.

Reference Works:

CA 41-44 (1979). CB (1967). WWAW (1974-75). Who's Who in Television and Cable (1983). The Women's Book of World Records and Achievements (1983).

—JOAN REARDON

UPDATED BY CARRIE SNYDER