Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: When did Julia Child write her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking?
Mastering the Art of French Cooking is a two-volume French cookbook written by Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, both of France, and Julia Child of the United States.[1] The book was written for the American market and published by Knopf in 1961 (Volume 1) and 1970 (Volume 2). The success of Volume 1 resulted in Julia Child being given her own television show, The French Chef, one of the first cooking programs on American television. Historian David Strauss argues that the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, "did more than any other event in the last half century to reshape the gourmet dining scene."[2]
DeVoto married Avis DeVoto (1904-1989), a book reviewer, editor, and avid cook. She became friends with Julia Child. Child had written a fan letter to Bernard DeVoto regarding an article of his in "Harper's Magazine"; he had said that he detested stainless steel knives, which she thought "100% right". Avis' response began a long correspondence and friendship between the two women during Child's work on her groundbreaking "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (1961). Child acknowledged Avis as "wet nurse" and "mentor" to the undertaking. Their correspondence is held in the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, and selections appeared in the book, "As Always, Julia" (2010) The DeVotos' son Mark (b. 1940) is a music theorist, composer, and retired professor at Tufts University. Their older son, Gordon, a writer, died in 2009.
DeVoto served as an early reader and editor for Child’s forthcoming cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", and her editorial connections would help Child and her co-authors Louise Bertholle and Simone Beck sign a contract with Houghton Mifflin in 1954. When the publishing company rejected the book, DeVoto helped push for the book’s publication by Alfred A. Knopf.
Child became increasingly frustrated with the project as work on Volume 2 went on. Not only was she agitated by the demands of the publisher, she was growing tired of working with Beck, who she felt was too demanding.[5] Child was also angry that, while Mastering the Art of French Cooking had been a runaway success in the United States, there was virtually no demand for the book in France itself, leading her to exclaim, "French women don't know a damn thing about French cooking, although they pretend they know everything."[19] Her experience writing Volume 2, along with her continued success on television, led Child to sever her partnership with Beck and preclude the possibility of a Volume 3, even though Beck, Bertholle, and Child had always intended the work to span five volumes.[20]
After World War II, Louisette Bertholle, who had the idea of writing a French cookbook for American cooks, met Simone Beck via the "Le Cercle des Gourmettes" culinary club and the two began to develop the concept further, collecting recipes and testing them. Their initial attempts at writing were unsuccessful, however their idea was rekindled in 1949 when they met Julia Child. Bertholle and Beck did successfully publish the short cookbook "What's Cooking in France" in 1952, and the three women founded their own cooking school, L'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes, in 1951. The latter was created to give French cooking lessons to American women living in Paris, and Child, as well as Beck, would wear the school's logo on her blouse when appearing on television.
Avis DeVoto (May 22, 1904 – 1989) was an American culinary editor, book reviewer and cook. She was highly influential in editing and guiding two famous cookbooks to publication: Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and British food writer Elizabeth David's "Italian Food".
While working for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation in August 2002, Powell began the Julie/Julia Project, a blog chronicling her attempt to cook all the recipes in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". The blog quickly gained a large following, and Powell signed a book deal with Little, Brown and Company. The resulting book, "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen", was published in 2005. The paperback edition was retitled "Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously".
Child's second book, "The French Chef Cookbook," was a collection of the recipes she had demonstrated on the show. It was soon followed in 1971 by "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume Two," again in collaboration with Simone Beck, but not with Louisette Bertholle, with whom the professional relationship had ended. Child's fourth book, "From Julia Child's Kitchen," was illustrated with her husband's photographs and documented the color series of "The French Chef," as well as provided an extensive library of kitchen notes compiled by Child during the course of the show.
Child is reported to have been unimpressed by Powell's blog, believing Powell's determination to cook every recipe in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in a year to be a stunt. In an interview, Child's editor, Judith Jones, said of Powell's blog:
Julia Carolyn Child (née McWilliams; August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004) was an American chef, author and television personality. She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was "The French Chef", which premiered in 1963.
The book "Julia's Kitchen Wisdom" accompanied a TV special of the same name and was compiled by co-author David Nussbaum, who had worked with Child and Jacques Pépin on their book of the previous year, "Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home". It was Child's last published book before her death in 2004 and was intended as a quick reference for common kitchen techniques rather than a comprehensive cookbook in the manner of 1961's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" or 1989's "The Way To Cook".
Jones's relationship with Julia Child similarly began when Jones became interested in Child's manuscript "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", which had been rejected by a publishing house. After her years in Paris, Jones had moved to New York, where she was frustrated with the ingredients and recipes commonly available in the U.S. Jones said of the book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", "This was the book I had been searching for," and she got it published. In America's postwar years, home cooking was dominated by packaged and frozen food, with an emphasis on ease and speed.
In the early 1950s, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, French chefs who had trained at Le Cordon Bleu, sought to capitalize on the American market for French cookbooks and wrote and published a small recipe book for American audiences, What's Cooking in France, in 1952.[5] By the late 1950s, Beck and Bertholle were interested in writing a comprehensive guide to French cuisine that would appeal to serious middle-class American home cooks. Beck and Bertholle wanted an English-speaking partner to help give them insight into American culture, translate their work into English, and bring it to American publishers, so they invited their friend Julia Child, who had also studied at Le Cordon Bleu, to collaborate with them on a book tentatively titled "French Cooking for the American Kitchen".[6][7] The resulting cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, proved groundbreaking and has since become a standard guide for the culinary community.[8]
Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume 1 was originally published in 1961 after some early difficulties. Beck, Bertholle, and Child initially signed a contract with publisher Houghton Mifflin, but Houghton Mifflin grew uninterested in the project. Child recalled one editor telling her, "Americans don't want an encyclopedia, they want to cook something quick, with a mix."[13] Beck, Bertholle, and Child refused to make requested changes to the manuscript, and Houghton Mifflin abandoned the project, writing that the book, as it stood, would be "too formidable to the American housewife."[3] Judith Jones of Alfred A. Knopf became interested in the manuscript after it had been rejected. After spending several years in Paris, Jones had moved to New York, where she grew frustrated with the limited ingredients and recipes commonly available in the United States. Jones felt that the manuscript would offer a lifeline to middle-class women, like her, who were interested in learning how to cook French cuisine in America, and predicted that Mastering the Art of French Cooking, "will do for French cooking here in America what Rombauer's The Joy of Cooking did for standard [American] cooking."[14][15] While Jones was enthusiastic about the book, Knopf had low expectations and invested very little into promoting it. In order to generate interest in the book, and without support from Knopf, Child appeared on several morning talk shows in 1961 to demonstrate recipes, which she later cited as the impetus for her own cooking show, The French Chef.[16]
In 1961, Houghton Mifflin famously passed on Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", giving it up to Alfred A. Knopf who published it in 1962. It became an overnight success and is considered by many to be the bible of French cooking. Houghton Mifflin's strategic error was depicted in the 2009 film "Julie & Julia".
To do something she enjoys, she decides to cook every recipe in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (1961) by Julia Child (Streep) in one year; Powell decides to write a blog to motivate herself and document her progress. She is initially met with criticism from her mother, who finds that the task is pointless, but she begins to gain a following. Eric supports her in this.
The first attempt at writing a cookbook wasn't successful, so Beck and Bertholle published the brief "What's Cooking in France?" in 1952. After that they published a booklet "Le pruneau devant le fourneau: Recettes de cuisine" (ca. 1952), Beck's only publication in French (for a copy, see Avis DeVoto Papers, A-167, #36). In 1949, after she had met Julia Child, she became inspired to write a French cookbook for Americans again. She, Child, and Bertholle together wrote "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", which was published in 1961. "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. II" (without Louisette Bertholle) followed in 1970, elaborating on several subjects (particularly baking and charcuterie) that the authors felt had received insufficient coverage in the first volume.
"The Way To Cook" differs from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in numerous ways. While "Mastering" was a collaboration that co-authors Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle had gotten underway before Child's involvement, "The Way To Cook" was a solo work written entirely by Child during the late 1980s. Another difference was that "The Way To Cook" did not focus entirely on French cuisine, on which her reputation had been built, but added a substantial number of recipes for traditional American dishes, especially those of New England, where Child's mother had come from and where Child had spent much of her life. In this, the book reflected the diversification of the cooking repertoire on Child's television show, "Julia Child & Company," that had taken place since its premiere in 1978.
Among her culinary influences are Julia Child and her book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", and Marcella Hazan and her book "The Classic Italian Cook Book".
Child starred in four more series in the 1990s that featured guest chefs: "Cooking with Master Chefs", "In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs", "Baking with Julia", and "Julia Child & Jacques Pépin Cooking at Home". She collaborated with Jacques Pépin many times for television programs and cookbooks. All of Child's books during this time stemmed from the television series of the same names.
Ephron's screenplay is adapted from two books: "My Life in France", Child's autobiography written with Alex Prud'homme, and a by Powell, "Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen" (later retitled "Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously"). Both of these books were written and published in the same time frame (2004–06). Powell's book was based on her blog "The Julie/Julia Project", where she had started documenting online her daily experiences cooking each of the 524 recipes in Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". The film is the first major motion picture based on a blog.
L'école des trois gourmandes (The School of the Three Happy Eaters) was a cooking school founded in Paris, France, during the 1950s by Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louisette Bertholle. The work done by the school was later expanded into the two-volume "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" series, published in 1961 and 1970, and Child wore the logo of the school as a badge for much of her television career.
The three would-be authors initially signed a contract with publisher Houghton Mifflin, which later rejected the manuscript for seeming too much like an encyclopedia. Finally, when it was first published in 1961 by Alfred A. Knopf, the 726-page "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" was a best-seller and received critical acclaim that derived in part from the American interest in French culture in the early 1960s. Lauded for its helpful illustrations and precise attention to detail, and for making fine cuisine accessible, the book is still in print and is considered a seminal culinary work. Following this success, Child wrote magazine articles and a regular column for "The Boston Globe" newspaper. She would go on to publish nearly twenty titles under her name and with others. Many, though not all, were related to her television shows. Her last book was the autobiographical "My Life in France", published posthumously in 2006 and written with her grandnephew, Alex Prud'homme. The book recounts Child's life with her husband, Paul Cushing Child, in post-World War II France.
Critical perception of Mastering the Art of French Cooking has generally remained positive. In 2015, The Daily Telegraph ranked it as the second greatest cookbook of all time, behind Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail Eating.[27] In a 2012 New York Times piece commemorating Julia Child's 100th birthday, Julia Moskin wrote that Mastering the Art of French Cooking should be credited with "turning the tide" on American food culture 1961, when "trends including feminism, food technology and fast food seemed ready to wipe out home cooking." Moskin added that, "in its fundamental qualities, the book and its many successors in the Child canon aren't dated at all. Their recipes remain perfectly written and rock-solid reliable."[28] By contrast, in 2009, food writer Regina Schrambling published a piece in Slate entitled, "Don't Buy Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking," where she argued that the book now "seems overwhelming in a Rachael Ray world," its recipes overly complicated and unsuited for modern American tastes.[29]
Volume 1 was immensely successful, and work on Volume 2 began around 1964, as a collaboration between Simone Beck and Julia Child, but not Louisette Bertholle. By the end of 1960, Beck and Child had grown frustrated with Bertholle because they felt she did not contribute enough to Mastering the Art of French Cooking to merit co-authorship and one third of the book's proceeds, and wanted Knopf to change the byline to read "by Simone Beck and Julia Child with Louisette Bertholle." Beck argued, "it is bad for the book for her to present herself as Author, as she really does not cook well enough, or know enough," and that Bertholle should only be entitled to 10% of the profits (to Beck and Child's 45% each). Ultimately, the contract with the publisher necessitated that Bertholle be given a co-author credit, and the final profit split was 18% to Bertholle and 41% each to Beck and Child. The dispute left Bertholle extremely upset, and effectively severed the professional partnership between herself and Beck and Child.[7]