Julia Child - whose love of French Culture brought the culinary arts to America.

"To be a good cook you have to have a love of the good, a love of hard work, and a love of creating. Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. And cooking draws upon your every talent—science, mathematics, energy, history, experience—and the more experience you have the less likely are your experiments to end in drivel and disaster. The more you know, the more you can create. There’s no end to imagination in the kitchen."  Julia Child -- Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times, by Lynn Gilbert. For a limited time, enjoy the a free chapter of Particular Passions on Facebook.

The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

Julia Child - whose love of French Culture brought the culinary arts to America.

"I think you have to decide who your audience is. If you don’t pick your audience, you’re lost because you’re not really talking to anybody. My audience is people who like to cook, who want to really learn how to do it. I don’t pay any attention to other people because they wouldn’t look at such a program anyway. I’m a teacher. I like it. I want people to be able to do things that will turn out properly. Of course, I am interested in people who want to learn, and my books are written for people who really want to cook, and to cook the right way. If you are going to make French bread, for instance, you want to make the best possible bread—or, at least, I think you should want that. It should have the best possible texture and taste, and if it doesn’t, why bother doing it?" Julia Child -- Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times, by Lynn Gilbert. For a limited time, enjoy the a free chapter of Particular Passions on Facebook. The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

Julia Child - To be a good cook,...

"To be a good cook you have to have a love of the good, a love of hard work, and a love of creating. Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. And cooking draws upon your every talent—science, mathematics, energy, history, experience—and the more experience you have the less likely are your experiments to end in drivel and disaster. The more you know, the more you can create. There’s no end to imagination in the kitchen." Julia Child -- Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times, by Lynn Gilbert. For a limited time, enjoy the a free chapter of Particular Passions on Facebook. The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

Julia Child - whose love of French Culture brought the culinary arts to America.

"I was planning to go into this cooking thing very seriously and take a long time studying and learning, but then I was suddenly thrown into it for keeps. After I had met Simca, I also met her friend and colleague, Louisette Bertholle, also a member of the gastronomy club, Le Cercle des Gourmettes. She and Simca were working on a cookbook for the United States, which had been going on for some time. One day the three of us had invited some American friends of mine for lunch. They wanted cooking lessons but said they didn’t want to go to the Cordon Bleu because they didn’t speak French, and so why didn’t we teach them? I thought, My heavens, I wasn’t nearly ready for that. But Simca, who is always ready for anything and was far more experienced than either Louisette or I, said, “Well, why not?” And we started our cooking school, L’Ecole des Trois Gourmandes, just about the next day."

– Julia Child, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert.

For a limited time, enjoy the a free chapter of Particular Passions on Facebook. The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

Julia Child - On Technique

"Provided you have fine ingredients, I think that cooking is mostly a matter of technique. And it’s the technique that I am interested in trying to show, because if you master that you can do whatever you want. Although there is much decrying of classical cooking nowadays, and of Escoffier and so on and so forth, I do think most of the talk is from people who are not real students of cooking. The classical training teaches you what to do with food and how to do it. If you don’t have that background, you really have nothing solid to depend on. Of course, you have to develop your taste for food, but that comes from experience—from eating, discussing, studying, experimenting—from taking food seriously."

– Julia Child, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert.

The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine  brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

Available on Apple and Amazon.

Julia Child - On France and all things French.

"I was hysterical about everything in France. I thought it was so wonderful, and it took me several years at least to calm down and not be so pro-French. After one taste of French food, after our very first meal in France, at Rouen, on the way from Le Havre to Paris in our old blue Buick that we had brought over with us on the boat—after that first unforgettable lunch, I was hooked. I’d never eaten like that before, I didn’t know such food existed. The wonderful attention paid to each detail of the meal was incredible to me. I’d never really drunk good wine before, and knew nothing at all about it. It was simply a whole new life experience."

– Julia Child, from 'Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert.

The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine  brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

Available on Apple and Amazon.

Julia Child - On Cooking

"I WAS THIRTY-TWO WHEN I started cooking; up until then, I just ate. I think it kind of crawled up on me. My mother didn’t cook because I grew up in an era when most all middle-income people had maids. So she never learned, and I never really learned at all. But my grandmother was a great cook. She grew up in the farming country of Illinois—she made doughnuts and cakes and wonderful chicken, as I remember. We always had good food at her house, and at our house, too—plain good American food. But we never discussed it; it was expected to be good."

Julia Child – Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times, by Lynn Gilbert

The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

Available on Apple  and  Amazon.

Julia Child - On Cooking

"After one taste of French food, after our very first meal in France, at Rouen, on the way from Le Havre to Paris in our old blue Buick that we had brought over with us on the boat — after that first unforgettable lunch, I was hooked. I’d never eaten like that before, I didn’t know such food existed. The wonderful attention paid to each detail of the meal was incredible to me. I’d never really drunk good wine before, and knew nothing at all about it. It was simply a whole new life experience. But you don’t spring into good cooking naked. You have to have some training. You have to learn how to eat. It’s like looking at a painting: If you don’t have any kind of background, you don’t really know what you’re looking at. The French have training from their families, they grow up with an appreciation of food, that it is an art, that it is worth considering carefully and looking at. I had to learn, and both cooking and taste developed simultaneously for me."

— Julia Child, in Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times.

The oral biography of Julia Child, whose love of French culture and cuisine brought a renewed appreciation for the culinary arts in America.

Available at Apple and Amazon.

Julia Child - On Cooking

"To be a good cook you have to have a love of the good, a love of hard work, and a love of creating. Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. And cooking draws upon your every talent—science, mathematics, energy, history, experience—and the more experience you have the less likely are your experiments to end in drivel and disaster. The more you know, the more you can create. There’s no end to imagination in the kitchen."

— Julia Child, in Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times. 

Enjoy the brief oral interview of Julia Child from the late 1970s, available on Apple and Amazon for 99 cents.

Julia Child - On Cooking

"You don’t spring into good cooking naked. You have to have some training. You have to learn how to eat. It’s like looking at a painting: If you don’t have any kind of background, you don’t really know what you’re looking at. The French have training from their families, they grow up with an appreciation of food, that it is an art, that it is worth considering carefully and looking at. I had to learn, and both cooking and taste developed simultaneously for me."

- Julia Child, in Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times.

Enjoy Julia Child's oral interview from the late 1970s - one of 42 oral interviews in Particular Passions. This chapter is available with our compliments for a limited time, at this link.