Today’s viewers may see the American chef as a feminist icon who broke into the then-overwhelmingly male worlds of haute cuisine and television through hard work
career. On the Food Network, contestants on “The Julia Child Challenge” make Child’s recipes in a replica of her kitchen. And Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, a historian at Smith College, recently published “Warming Up Julia Child”, about the friends and colleagues who nurtured her career. Why the sudden burst of interest?
One answer is that contemporary popular culture loves familiar successes—witness the current fad for remakes, reboots and the ever-expanding superhero “universes”. Child was wildly popular, with a literary and television career spanning the 20th century’s last four decades. Studios and publishers imagine that she has legions of fans who will eagerly watch and read anything about her.
But that is too cynical by half. The real answer is that Child lived a bold and eventful life, capacious enough to offer nostalgia to those who remember her and inspiration to those who do not. In effect, she was a populariser of French cuisine—but that carries the implication that she somehow diluted it for the masses. In fact, her recipes are not simple or dumbed down: they are clear.
At heart she was a demystifier and a pragmatist. She ensured that all her recipes could be recreated in the average mid-century American home kitchen. She took food seriously, but unlike generations of men in white toques who cultivated imperious, remote demeanours, she had no patience for cant or pomp. Cooking French food does not require that the chef be touched by God, or begin an apprenticeship in childhood; it merely requires that they follow a series of easily explicable steps.
That line is quintessential Child: straightforward, funny and confident in the best sense. To earlier generations, she was an emissary from the refined world of French gastronomy. Today’s viewers may see her, rightly, as a feminist icon who broke into the then-overwhelmingly male worlds of haute cuisine and television despite having no professional experience in either, on the strength of unfussy charm, wit and hard work . Those qualities are timeless.
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