Julia Child

Julia Child (born August 15, 1912, Pasadena, California, U.S.—died August 13, 2004, Santa Barbara) was an American cooking expert, author, and television personality noted for her promotion of traditional French cuisine, especially through her programs on public TV.

Early life and career

Julia McWilliams was the daughter of a prosperous financier and consultant, who graduated from Smith College (B.A., 1934) and worked occasionally in advertising. During World War II, from 1941 to 1945, she performed clerical work in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and China for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency), where she met Paul Cushing Child, whom she married in 1945.

While Child was never actually a spy, her work with the OSS did serve as an unusual precursor to her tenure as America’s favorite cook. In the early 1940s reports of shark attacks on downed pilots were creating a media sensation and concern in the military. The OSS asked scientists from Harvard University and the Field Museum in Chicago to come up with a shark deterrent. Child was part of a team of OSS researchers who tested hundreds of compounds before coming up with a “shark cake” that smelled like dead shark and could be attached to pilots’ life vests. It was deployed in the waning days of World War II. Child described her time at the OSS in the book Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS, saying “I must say we had lots of fun.”

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Britannica Quiz

Julia Child's Kitchen Quiz

After the war Julia and Paul Child moved to Paris where she attended the Cordon Bleu cooking school for six months and studied privately with master chef Max Bugnard. She and two French friends, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, in 1951 founded L’École des Trois Gourmandes (“The School of the Three Gourmands”) and later wrote the best-selling cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 2 vol. (1961, 1970), which was praised for its clarity and comprehensiveness. Her culinary crusade was stated plainly in her introduction:

This is a book for the servantless American cook who can be unconcerned on occasion with budgets, waistlines, time schedules, children’s meals, the parent-chauffeur-den mother syndrome or anything else which might interfere with the enjoyment of producing something wonderful to eat.

The French Chef, televisions programs, and publications

The Childs settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1961, though they continued to visit Europe regularly and maintained a house in the south of France. A promotional appearance on television led to an offer to host a cooking series on Boston’s public television station, and The French Chef premiered on February 11, 1962. The immensely popular show went on to air for 206 episodes broadcast over 10 seasons. It is credited with convincing the American public to try cooking French food at home. With her humor, exuberance, and unpretentiousness, Child became an unlikely star. Although she often made mistakes while cooking, she remained unflappable, encouraging viewers to accept mishaps and continue cooking. Child, who had a towering 6-foot-2-inch (1.9-meter) frame and a distinct warbling voice, ended each show with “Bon appétit!”

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Numerous television series followed, including Julia Child and Company, Dinner at Julia’s, Baking with Julia, and In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs. She produced a book under the name of each of her shows and also wrote The Way to Cook (1989) and Cooking with Master Chefs (1993). Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home (1999) was cowritten with chef Jacques Pépin, a friend with whom she also collaborated on television shows. Her autobiography, My Life in France (cowritten with a grandnephew, Alex Prud’homme), was published in 2006. In 2009 Nora Ephron used that volume as half of the story she told in the film Julie & Julia, featuring Meryl Streep as the popular chef. Child was also the subject of the documentary Julia (2021).

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Awards and archives

Child was the recipient of numerous honors during her career, including a Peabody Award (1964) and an Emmy Award (1966) for her television work and a National Book Award (1980). She was appointed to the French Legion of Honor (2000) and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2003). A portion of her kitchen and some of her kitchen implements were put on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Child’s personal papers are held at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.