Mastering the art of French Cooking 50th Anniversary
by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck
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Book Summary Information
Author: Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone BeckIllustrator: Sidonie Coryn
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-10-16
ISBN: 0375413405
Number of pages: 752
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Book Reviews of Mastering the art of French Cooking 50th Anniversary
Book Review: "If you're afraid of butter, as many people are nowadays, just put in cream!"
Summary: 5 Stars
The movie "Julie & Julia" is built around the astonishing idea that a fan of "Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume One" would cook her way through the book's almost-600 recipes in a single year. I've been using this book for three decades and I've only made a fraction of the recipes. But I've made that fraction so many times that the pages fall open to my favorite recipes.
The other way to identify my favorites? Greasy pages. Makes sense --- Child knew, when Michael Pollan and Nina Planck were still in their cribs, that it wasn't real food that kills you, it's grotesque American portions. As Child gaily told her television audience, "If you're afraid of butter, as many people are nowadays, just put in cream!"
Such bluntness was her nature --- and her charm. She came from money and privilege; the challenge of her life was to find something worth committing herself to. First came Paul Child. Then, at 37, came the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. And then, through a bit of luck, came an opportunity to work with Simone Beck on a French cookbook for Americans. As she tells the story in My Life in France, that book took almost a decade.
Judith Jones was the first American editor to read the manuscript. She flipped: "I pored over the recipe for a beef stew and learned the right cuts of meat for braising, the correct fat to use (one that would not burn), the importance of drying the meat and browning it in batches, the secret of the herb bouquet, the value of sautéing the garnish of onions and mushrooms separately. I ran home to make the recipe --- and my first bite told me that I had finally produced an authentic French boeuf bourguignon --- as good as one I could get in Paris. This, I was convinced, was a revolutionary cookbook, and if I was so smitten, certainly others would be."
Quality mattered. So did timing. "Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume One" was published in 1961. In the White House was a President with a wife who loved France. Air travel was replacing ocean liners --- Americans in larger numbers were traveling to Europe. Frozen food and TV dinners were clogging the supermarkets; Child lobbied for accessible sophistication, and changed the way some of us ate.
And then there was multi-media. WGBH, Boston's public TV station, invited Child to promote her book. The station had no studio kitchen, so she brought eggs, a whisk and a hot plate. On camera, she made an omelette, narrating the process with wit and confidence. A TV series soon followed --- she was Martha Stewart before there was Martha Stewart.
Actually, she was much more. Back then, cooking was not a respected profession. She showed that it was a discipline --- and an art. And she legitimized the home-gourmet. Was cooking a chore? Not after you'd seen Julia Child, amusing herself as she prepared dinner.
All these years later, I'm still charmed by Child's 13-page screed on omelettes. On the other hand, I never had much use for her pâtés or terrines, soufflés or sauces. Dessert still seems like overkill. And the seven recipes for kidney? Non-events. It's the classics that first appealed to me, and still do.
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