Living Through Better Cooking

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She learned that lesson during World War II, when as a 31-year-old file clerk for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA), she met her future husband Paul, who ran the OSS war room. She had no love of food, having been raised in Pasadena, Calif., by a New Englander mother so New Englandy that she registered her daughter at Smith the day she was born. But Paul adored food. So even though she had never cooked much, Julia got a diploma at France's Cordon Bleu when Paul was stationed in Paris. Shortly thereafter, she and two French colleagues, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, started writing the classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It was published in 1961, the year she and Paul moved to Massachusetts.

Two years later, she became the host of The French Chef, a weekly program on PBS (then known as Educational Television). That show helped establish public television, about which Child felt so strongly that she not only donated money but also turned down several network offers.

By creating one of the few cooking shows that made viewers want to cook more than eat, she inspired me to make dinner for my family on Mondays. Every week I was snapping bones and yanking guts from a chicken, thinking of Julia Child and feeling cool. She taught me that Americans can cook as well as the French without being all French about it. And now, when restaurants in New York City, San Francisco and even Las Vegas are as good as those in Paris, she has once again proved the American axiom that brashness trumps snobbery. That fact, even more than my totally awesome onion soup, is what has got me by. --By Joel Stein