This is a book about some of the things I have loved most in life:
my husband, Paul Child; la belle France; and the many pleasures of
cooking and eating. It is also something new for me. Rather than a
collection of recipes, I’ve put together a series of linked
autobiographical stories, mostly focused on the years 1948 through
1954, when we lived in Paris and Marseille, and also a few of our
later adventures in Provence. Those early years in France were among
the best of my life. They marked a crucial period of transformation
in which I found my true calling, experienced an awakening of the
senses, and had such fun that I hardly stopped moving long enough to
catch my breath.
Before I moved to France, my life had not prepared me for what I
would discover there. I was raised in a comfortable, WASPy,
uppermiddle-class family in sunny and non-intellectual Pasadena,
California. My father, John McWilliams, was a conservative
businessman who managed family real-estate holdings; my mother,
Carolyn, whom we called Caro, was a very warm and social person.
But, like most of her peers, she didn’t spend much time in the
kitchen. She occasionally sallied forth to whip up baking-powder
biscuits, or a cheese dish, or finnan haddie, but she was not a
cook. Nor was I.
As a girl I had zero interest in the stove. I’ve always had a
healthy appetite, especially for the wonderful meat and the fresh
produce of California, but I was never encouraged to cook and just
didn’t see the point in it. Our family had a series of hired cooks,
and they’d produce heaping portions of typical American fare-fat
roasted chicken with buttery mashed potatoes and creamed spinach; or
well-marbled porterhouse steaks; or aged leg of lamb cooked medium
gray-not pinky-red rare, as the French do-and always accompanied by
brown gravy and green mint sauce. It was delicious but not refined
food.
Paul, on the other hand, had been raised in Boston by a rather
bohemian mother who had lived in Paris and was an excellent cook. He
was a cultured man, ten years older than I was, and by the time we
met, during World War II, he had already traveled the world. Paul
was a natty dresser and spoke French beautifully, and he adored good
food and wine. He knew about dishes like moules marinières and boeuf
bourguignon and canard à l’orange-things that seemed hopelessly
exotic to my untrained ear and tongue. I was lucky to marry Paul. He
was a great inspiration, his enthusiasm about wine and food helped
to shape my tastes, and his encouragement saw me through
discouraging moments. I would never have had my career without Paul
Child.
We’d first met in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) during the Second World War and
were married in September 1946. In preparation for living with a new
husband on a limited government income, I decided I’d better learn
how to cook. Before our wedding, I took a bride-to-be’s cooking
course from two Englishwomen in Los Angeles, who taught me to make
things like pancakes. But the first meal I ever cooked for Paul was
a bit more ambitious: brains simmered in red wine! I’m not quite
sure why I picked that particular dish, other than that it sounded
exotic and would be a fun way to impress my new husband. I skimmed
over the recipe, and figured it wouldn’t be too hard to make. But
the results, alas, were messy to look at and not very good to eat.
In fact, the dinner was a disaster. Paul laughed it off, and we
scrounged up something else that night. But deep down I was annoyed
with myself, and I grew more determined than ever to learn how to
cook well.
In our first year as young marrieds, we lived in Georgetown, in
Washington, D.C., in a small white clapboard house on Olive Avenue.
While Paul worked on mounting exhibits for the State Department, I
worked as a file clerk. In the evening, I would approach the stove
armed with lofty intentions, the Joy of Cooking or Gourmet magazine
tucked under my arm, and little kitchen sense. My meals were
satisfactory, but they took hours of laborious effort to produce.
I’d usually plop something on the table by 10:00 p.m., have a few
bites, and collapse into bed. Paul was unfailingly patient. But
years later he’d admit to an interviewer: “Her first attempts were
not altogether successful…. I was brave because I wanted to
marry Julia. I trust I did not betray my point of view.” (He did
not.)
In the winter of 1948, Paul was offered a job running the Visual
Presentation Department for the United States Information Service
(USIS) in Paris, and I tagged along. I had never been to Europe, but
once we had settled in Paris, it was clear that, out of sheer luck,
I had landed in a magical city-one that is still my favorite place
on earth. Starting slowly, and then with a growing enthusiasm, I
devoted myself to learning the language and the customs of my new
home.
In Paris and later in Marseille, I was surrounded by some of the
best food in the world, and I had an enthusiastic audience in my
husband, so it seemed only logical that I should learn how to cook
la cuisine bourgeoise-good, traditional French home cooking. It was
a revelation. I simply fell in love with that glorious food and
those marvelous chefs. The longer we stayed there, the deeper my
commitment became.
In collaborating on this book, Alex Prud’homme and I have been
fortunate indeed to have spent hours together telling stories,
reminiscing, and thinking out loud. Memory is selective, and we have
not attempted to be encyclopedic here, but have focused on some of
the large and small moments that stuck with me for over fifty years.
Alex was born in 1961, the year that our first book, Mastering the
Art of French Cooking, which I wrote with Simone Beck and Louisette
Bertholle, was published. How appropriate, then, that he and I
should work together on this volume, which recounts the making of
that book.
Our research has been aided immeasurably by a thick trove of family
letters and datebooks kept from those days, along with Paul’s
photographs, sketches, poems, and Valentine’s Day cards. Paul and
his twin brother, Charlie Child, a painter who lived in Bucks
County, Pennsylvania, wrote to each other every week or so. Paul
took letter writing seriously: he’d set aside time for it, tried to
document our day-to-day lives in a journalistic way, and usually
wrote three to six pages a week in a beautiful flowing hand with a
special fountain pen; often he included little sketches of places
we’d visited, or photos (some of which we have used in these pages),
or made mini-collages out of ticket stubs or newsprint. My letters
were usually one or two pages, typed, and full of spelling mistakes,
bad grammar, and exclamation points; I tended to focus on what I was
cooking at the time, or the human dramas boiling around us. Written
on thin pale-blue or white airmail paper, those hundreds of letters
have survived the years in very good shape.
When I reread them now, the events those letters describe come
rushing back to me with great immediacy: Paul noticing the brilliant
sparkle of autumn light on the dark Seine, his daily battles with
Washington bureaucrats, the smell of Montmartre at dusk, or the
night we spied wild-haired Colette eating at that wonderful Old
World restaurant Le Grand Véfour. In my letters, I enthuse over my
first taste of a toothsome French duck roasted before an open fire,
or the gossip I’d heard from the vegetable lady in the Rue de
Bourgogne marketplace, or the latest mischief of our cat, Minette,
or the failures and triumphs of our years of cookbook work. It is
remarkable that our family had the foresight to save those
letters-it’s almost as if they knew Alex and I were going to sit
down and write this book together one day.
We tip our hats in gratitude to the many people and institutions who
have helped us with My Life in France, especially to my dear friend
and lifelong editor at Knopf, Judith Jones, she of the gimlet eye
and soft editorial touch. And to my beloved French “sisters,” Simone
Beck and Louisette Bertholle, with whom I collaborated; to my
sister, Dorothy, my enthusiastic niece, Phila Cousins, and her
brother, Sam; to my invaluable assistant, Stephanie Hersh, and my
attorney Bill Truslow. We also sing the praises of the Schlesinger
Library at the Radcliffe Institute, which has graciously housed the
bulk of my papers and Paul’s photographs; the Museum of American
History at the Smithsonian Institution, which has been kind enough
to display artifacts from my career, including my entire kitchen
from our house in Cambridge, Massachusetts; to WGBH, Boston’s public
television station; to my alma mater, Smith College; also to the
many family members and friends who have aided us with memories,
photos, good company, and fine meals as we pieced together this
volume.
What fun and good fortune I had living in France with Paul, and
again in writing about our experiences with Alex. I hope that this
book is as much fun for you to read as it was for us to put
together-bon appétit!
Julia Child
Montecito, California
August 2004
(Continues…)
Excerpted from My Life in France
by Julia Child Alex Prud’Homme
Copyright © 2006 by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Knopf
Copyright © 2006
Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
All right reserved.
ISBN: 1-4000-4346-8
