Julia McWilliams Child, 1912 - 2004
Polaroid portrait by Elsa Dorfman, 18 October 1988
Born: 15 August 1912, Pasadena, California
Died: 14 August 2004, Montecito, California
Born Julia McWilliams, the future chef attended Polytechnic School there and The Branson School at Ross, California. After graduating with a BA in history from Smith College in 1934, she worked as an advertising copywriter at New York City before moving back to California. When war broke out, the six-foot-tall Julia joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the precursor to the CIA) because she was too tall for the WAVEs. She served at Washington City, Ceylon (where she met a coworker, Paul Child), and China during the war. Julia and Paul moved to Washington City where they married, when Paul joined the Foreign Service they moved to Paris. Amazed by French cuisine, she attended Le Cordon Bleu, and starting in 1951 taught French cooking to visiting Americans in Julia's kitchen with two friends. While living at Cambridge, Massachusetts Julia inked a book deal with Houghton Mifflin, who rejected the manuscript for being too much like an encyclopedia, so it was Alfred A. Knopf that published Mastering the ARt of French Cooking in 1961. A television appearance promoting the book lead to her own show, The French Chef, on WBGH Boston. Over the course of the next three decades she had numerous shows, she considered the video series and book, The Way to Cook, to be her magnum opus. (The Quotemaster owes much of his rotund physique to extensive savory experimenting with that volume.) Julia founded the American Institute of Wine and Food at Napa, California in 1981. She received honorary doctorates from her alma mater, Harvard, and several other universities, received the French Legion of Honor in 2000, and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003. She died of renal failure two days short of her 92nd birthday. Her favorite ingredient was butter.
Biography from Wikipedia and StarChefs
Julia Child quotes:
Quotes found : 36 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 3) 1 2 3 Next
Click here to find books by Julia Child at Amazon.com
- A cookbook is only as good as its worst recipe.
- Always remember: If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know?
- Being tall is an advantage, especially in business. People will always remember you. And if you're in a crowd, you'll always have some clean air to breathe.
- Cassoulet, that best of bean feasts, is everyday fare for a peasant but ambrosia for a gastronome, though its ideal consumer is a 300-pound blocking back who has been splitting firewood nonstop for the last twelve hours on a subzero day in Manitoba.
- Dining with one’s friends and beloved family is certainly one of life’s primal and most innocent delights, one that is both soul-satisfying and eternal.
- Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper.
- Everything in moderation, including moderation.
- Fat gives things flavor.
- Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.
- I don't think about whether people will remember me or not. I've been an okay person. I've learned a lot. I've taught people a thing or two. That's what's important.
- I enjoy cooking with wine, sometimes I even put it in the food I'm cooking.
- I think every woman should have a blowtorch.
- I think the inner person is the most important.... I would like to see an invention that keeps the mind alert. That's what is important.
- I was thirty-two when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.
- I wouldn't keep him around long if I didn't feed him well.
Quotes found : 36 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 3) 1 2 3 Next
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