Julia Child (1912-2004) can be thanked for introducing French cuisine to America - the land of hot dogs and apple pie - during the 1960s. Aside from her most famous creation, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Child wrote more than a dozen cookbooks. Mastering the Art of French Cooking was first published in 1961 and her TV career began two years later.
She married a diplomat, Paul Child, in 1946 and the couple moved to Paris in 1948 where her love of French cooking truly developed. She attended the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school and soon met Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle after joining a cooking club. The three cooks began teaching French cooking to Americans living in Paris before writing volume 1 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Its been claimed Julia Child actually considered The Way to Cook as her finest cookbook. Written in the late 1980s, The Way to Cook also includes American recipes and made greater use of modern technologies, such as food processors, than her previous cookbooks.
Her television shows, particularly The French Chef, turned her into a cultural icon in America - much loved and much parodied. Her final book was My Life in France, an autographical account published in 2006 after her death. My Life in France details Child's life in France following World War II.
Julia Child's books
