Tours for the Thinking Person : Master of the Art of French Cooking

Our heroine is a tall lady with a familiar voice, and if you want to hear the ultimate European cooking school success story, hers is it.

In 1948, the U.S. State Department assigned her husband to Paris. Encouraged by her gourmet mate, our heroine figured she’d make the most of her new location. So she signed up to study at the famous school for chefs, Le Cordon Bleu.

She had been cooking seriously for a few years, and had completed one cooking class in Beverly Hills, and a Berlitz French course. But the Cordon Bleu was strange new territory, as our heroine recalls, and at least one instructor seemed to hate Americans. Still, our heroine persevered in the exhilarating, demanding, stuffy atmosphere for about six months, long enough to see chicken chaud froid (in aspic) assigned three times, and to make friends with a few aspiring French cooks. It wasn’t easy, but in the end, the whole idea of a cooking school in Europe worked out fairly well for Julia Child.

“I’d never had really beautiful food,” says Child today, recalling her first days at the Cordon Bleu. “I found that I really knew just about nothing. I’d never made a real cake before. I’d never made mayonnaise. A whole world opened to me, and they treated everything with great seriousness, which was wonderful. . . . I was just hooked.”

Once done with her studies, Child started a cooking school (L’Ecole des Trois Gourmandes) with partners Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle in 1951--a bold move, considering her relatively limited experience. But the school, in a little apartment on the Left Bank, flourished, and Child lived in France until 1954. After the Childs eventually resettled in Cambridge, Mass., she concluded the co-writing of her first book, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” which was published--after several years and multiple rejections--in 1961. Reviewers raved, from the New York Times on down, and in 1963 Child debuted as host of a wry, unpretentious cooking show called “The French Chef” on public television in Boston. The career of America’s best-known chef was launched.

Child, now 83, continues to cook and star in PBS programs (a series titled “Baking at Julia’s” is due to air this year) and publish books (nine at last count). She remains a frequent visitor and guest instructor at cooking schools in Europe and North America, and she readily offers advice to aspiring chefs.

“If I were doing it again today, I’d first get a good footing in French,” she says, noting that a command of the language will help an English-speaker begin to understand the unique status of cooking among the French as “sport and art form.”

Child also says she’d be inclined to start with courses from either the Cordon Bleu in Paris or La Varenne in Burgundy, both of which offer “a wonderful way to start off.”

After that, she says, “I’d work for a year or so.” And then, having absorbed that training, she’d look into Ecole Lenotre in Paris, which specializes in pastry cooking.

In fact, Child is following her own advice. After years of visits to Italy, she has acquired a few language-instruction cassettes and is studying Italian.

“I just feel so stupid,” she explains in that familiar voice, “not being able to say anything.”