Julia Child in her kitchen as photographed
©Lynn Gilbert, 1978, on Wikipedia.

Julia Child, the woman credited with teaching America how to cook, gets a brief mention in Elaine Sciolino's The Only Street in Paris (which I reviewed here), and is quoted in one of the chapter headings: "I closed my eyes and inhaled the rising perfume, Then I lifted a forkful of fish to my mouth, took a bite, and chewed slowly, The flesh of the sole was delicate, with a taste of the ocean that blended marvellously with the browned butter. It was a morsel of perfection."
The words come from Child's My Life in France, described as 'a classic memoir of food and French living' so I bought it it, because Paris in July,  a celebration of all things French, is still running, and I thought the book might be interesting but, sadly, I was disappointed. I know I'm being unfair, because Child was approaching her 92nd birthday when this written, in conjunction with her grand nephew Alex Prud'homme, based on her memories, old family letters, and other documents. 
It's a fairly slender book, and I'd expected a lot more about food and cooking - I felt there was way too much about journeys, parking, meetings, phone calls, who said what to who, and people she knows, few of whom are very interesting. For me, it was a memoir that never quite came to life, and I skipped bits because I was so bored.
Julia Child went to France in 1948 when her husband was appointed to a job to 'inform the French people by graphic means about the aspects of American life the US government deems important'. I'll say no more about that, because I shouldn't let my views on her husband's work affect my thoughts on her book.

So, back to Julia. She was 36 when she arrived in France, couldn't speak French and couldn't cook. Her first meal in France was a revelation: half a dozen oysters with a rye bread, followed by sole meuniere in brown butter with sprinkling of parsley on the top, and then a salade verte. It was the most exciting meal she'd ever had, and a far cry from the broiled mackerel served up back home in Passadena. She falls in love with French food - things like juicy pears 'so succulent you could eat them with a spoon', 'exquisite grapes with a delicate, fugitive, sweet, ambrosial and irresistible flavour'. I could have done with more writing like this.

She learns to speak French, and starts to cook, seeking advice and information from food stalls shops and market stalls, restaurant cooks, and a couple of cookery books and more accomplished, but however much she learns, she wants to know more. . Slowly, she becomes more   slowly becoming more accomplished, but however much she leans, she wants to know more, eventually enrolling on a  cordon bleu course and continuing to practise and experiment at home.

"I suddenly discovered that cooking was a rich and layered and endlessly fascinating subject," writes Child. "The best way to describe it it is to say that I fell in love with with French food - the tastes, the processes, the history, the endless variations, the rigorous discipline, the creativity, the wonderful people, the equipment, the rituals." She says she found her life's calling, but it's not often that her passion and obsession come across.

However, she was determined to pass on her new acquired knowledge to others, so they too could enjoy the joys of good food. There is a lengthy (very lengthy) account of how she joined up with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle to write a book showing Americans how to cook classic French dishes using American ingredients, and of the battle they had to get it published. Mastering the Art of French Cooking went on to become a culinary classic. First printed in 1961, it's still available (in two volumes) and gives detailed instructions for preparing hundreds of dishes: it's very practical, providing what is probably a fool-proof guide for people who have little or no knowledge of cooking. It is very American (obviously) which may be off-putting for English readers (certainly is for me) but you can look up the terminology to find English equivalents.

Child went on to produce more books, as well as American TV shows, but for my money, Elizabeth David, whose French Provincial Cooking was printed a year before Child's book, remains the doyenne of French cookery writers and there are many other writers who give better accounts of Paris and French people than Julia Child.