| |
| |
Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Julia Child
Julia Child is a master chef, television pioneer, and author who changed the way many Americans cook. From her cookbooks to her numerous television series, she has delighted and educated amateur and professional chefs around the world.
Aug. 13, 2004 -- Julia Child , the woman who brought French cooking to the American masses, has died. She was 91.
Julia Child was born on August 15, 1912 in Pasadena, California and graduated from Smith College in 1934. After college, she worked in publicity and advertising in New York, and during World War II she served with the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C., Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and China. After the war, at the end of 1948, her husband Paul Child was assigned to the U.S. Information Service at The American Embassy in Paris, and Julia enrolled in the Cordon Bleu Cooking School. There she meet her two French colleagues, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, and they subsequently opened a cooking school, “L’Ecole des Trois Gourmandes,” which resulted in their joint book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking , published in 1961.
Julia and Paul eventually returned to the States, and after a television interview at WGBH, Boston, the station asked Julia to try out a series of TV cooking shows, and The French Chef was born on February 11, 1963. After some 200 programs on classic French cooking, she branched out into contemporary cuisine with the television series Julia Child & Company, Julia Child & More Company, and Dinner at Julia’s. In 1984, she completed six “The Way to Cook” teaching videos.
Child has appeared on national television programs including: Good Morning America , The Johnny Carson Show , The David Letterman Show , Phil Donahue , and The Rosie O’Donnell Show . She was host for the PBS Cooking with Master Chefs series, with a different well-known chef for each of the programs, and also for the 39-part series, Baking with Julia . Her newest television venture is a 22-art series with Jacques Pepin. It is a technique-based program aimed at teaching the serious home cook and would-be chef. Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home will air in the fall of 1999 and the companion cookbook will be published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Julia Child’s books include: The French Chef Cookbook (1968), Mastering the Art of French Cooking , Volumes I and II , co-authored by Simone Beck (1970), and From Julia Child’s Kitchen (1975). Julia Child & Company and Julia Child & More Company , originally published in the late 1970’s, were combined into four books issued in the Fall of 1998. Her large, fully-illustrated book, The Way to Cook , was issued in October 1989, and is now available in both hard cover and paperback. Baking with Julia , a companion book to the recent Baking series, was published by Morrow, and written by Dorie Greenspan. Cooking with Master Chefs was issued in the Fall of 1993 to accompany the TV series, and was followed by In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs .
Julia Child has been interviewed and written about in many publications, including: Time , Newsweek , The New Yorker , The Christian Science Monitor , The New York Times , People Magazine and TV Guide . She has received honorary degrees from Boston University, Harvard University, Bates College, Rutgers University, and Smith College. She was awarded the Ordre de Merite Agricole in 1967 by the French government, and in 1976 the Ordre de Merite Nationale. She was elected a member of the Confrerie de Ceres for her work on French bread, and is a member of the American chapter of the Commanderie des Cordons Bleus de France. She was awarded two national Emmys in 1995 for the Master Chef series, and in 1997 for Baking with Julia. In 1999, she received the Peabody Award from Public Television.
Mrs. Child is an active member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and a cofounder of the American Institute of Wine and Food.
Aug. 19, 2002 -- Julia Child, the woman who helped ignite a food revolution in the United States, today handed her kitchen over to the nation.
The Smithsonian National Museum of American History opened a new exhibit Monday featuring the Cambridge, Mass. kitchen where Child filmed many of her television shows -- and where many Americans learned to be less afraid of French cooking.
The exhibit is not a re-creation of the popular television chef's kitchen, but the actual aqua-marine cabinets, the famed big Garland stove, copper pots and pans, knives -- even the angel food cake cutter. It's virtually everything from her kitchen -- including the kitchen sink -- carefully removed, shipped to Washington, D.C. and put back in place exactly where it originally stood.
Child, who celebrated her 90th birthday last week, is beginning to look frail. But as she examined her former kitchen's new home, she said "I wish I could come in and turn everything on."
Child unveiled the glassed-in kitchen gallery with her trademark salutation "Bon Appetit!" -- which is also the name of the exhibit. The highlight of the exhibit is a 20-by-14-foot exact replica of her Cambridge kitchen, where only the walls and floor were fabricated by Smithsonian craftsmen. It also includes videos from some of her famed cooking shows over the years, and even features the contents of the kitchen drawers, filled with countless kitchen gadgets.
Perhaps the most exotic of all the gadgets was a small signaling mirror issued to Child when she served in the Office of Strategic Services -- the forerunner of the CIA -- during World War II.
America's most famous cook is generally credited with introducing the basics of French cooking to America with her television series The French Chef , which started in 1962. At the time, most American home cooking was considered bland, familiar and convenient. Child is credited with popularizing exotic ingredients and then-unusual cooking methods to spice up the American diet.
Child loves to use butter and cream in her recipes, bucking the national trend for low-fat, healthy living. Her secret of staying trim, despite the rich diet? "I don't eat so much butter and cream -- just enough! And no snacking. That's very important."
In November 2001, when Julia Child left her Massachusetts home of forty-two years to return to her native California, she gave her kitchen to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Behring Center.
Child's late husband, Paul, designed the kitchen for her in 1961, and there she cooked for herself, for family and friends, for professional colleagues -- and for the entire country. For seven years the kitchen was a set for three enormously popular public-television series. Millions of Americans watched the shows and felt they had cooked, eaten, and laughed there with an old friend.
The kitchen is also a setting for the work of a culinary expert. Here Child gave lessons, tested recipes for her cookbooks, and cooked with and for colleagues. The kitchen and its three pantries held tools and utensils that only professionals (and devoted amateurs) use. But ultimately, it was a place for family. Along with the professional equipment we find her favorite gadgets -- the small, simple, familiar objects of daily use at American family meals.
With this kitchen, the Museum has acquired an "object" that perfectly represents Julia Child's extraordinary influence on the way Americans think about their food and its history.
Julia Child in her kitchen in Santa Barbara, California, 1986
|
|
|
|
|
Medal History
