8 ms·

Julia Child's Kitchens

130 points by tintinnabula 2y ago

UberFly 2y ago
Every story I read about Julia Child makes me admire her more and more. I also remember an NPR story about her creating shark repellent during WW2 to protect undersea mines.
- unwind 2y ago
  That is an epic use of "protect" in a very unexpected way. Thanks.
  - gowld 2y ago
    It protects the sharks too!
Loughla 2y ago
The quote of hers, "If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know?" Is modified and used for anytime my family drops something. That woman was a cultural treasure.
- bluedino 2y ago
  I call it concrete seasoning when I drop something off the grill
  - dugmartin 2y ago
    A friend in high school that worked at a steak house chain called it “floor spice”. He said it was often intentionally applied when rude customers demanded their steak be cooked more. Never send back food.
    - rfrey 2y ago
      > Never send back food. I like my steak rare. But if someone doesn't, and the kitchen messes it up, the correct response is to either choke it down, or leave a $65 meal uneaten on your plate?
      - qup 2y ago
        The answer lies in how much you like the taste of floor spice.
      - mhuffman 2y ago
        Considering it is a teenager or young 20s person in the kitchen getting paid just above minimum wage and doesn't care about you at all ... yes?
        whtsthmttrmn 2y ago
        [flagged]
        mhuffman 2y ago
        I agree that it does not, however real life sucks sometimes.
        throwanem 2y ago
        Solving problems like this is why God made front-of-house managers. Ask for one - politely, and with clarity that you're not blaming your server or indeed anyone individually for anything - behave yourself like a grownup in the resulting conversation, and it's amazing how well things can go. I know, I know, the Karen stereotype. But that isn't about conversations on the quality of service; it's about nominal adults behaving shamefully childish in public. Median American public behavior, especially in restaurants, sets a bar so shockingly low that anyone capable of disciplining their emotions in the slightest degree easily excels it.
        kamalamomala 2y ago
- euroderf 2y ago
  Five-minute rule.
StayTrue 2y ago
Similar/related: https://www.hermanmiller.com/stories/why-magazine/home-ergonomics/ https://www.hermanmiller.com/stories/why-magazine/home-ergon...
jillesvangurp 2y ago
I got into cooking via Youtube. Youtube cooks became a thing about fifteen years ago. People like Jamie Oliver started promoting first themselves and then others on Youtube and I sort of started watching that stuff to relax. The genius of this was that Jamie Oliver was of course famous but the people he promoted weren't. They were just ordinary people that pointed a camera at themselves while they were cooking stuff. Quite a few of them are still on Youtube and have successful channels now. And of course others have come along. There are many thousands of people regularly uploading stuff. These days if I want to learn how to make something, Youtube is the first place to look. It took me a ridiculously long time to realize that I could do some cooking myself. If you are a programmer (like me), my realization was that if I can follow instructions and implement some complex algorithm, cooking is a lot easier. And even the failures can be tasty. Julia Childs was basically doing the same thing as these Youtube chefs but about half a century earlier. You can find quite a bit of her shows on Youtube. But it's got a similar vibe to it: shot at home, very passionate about what she did, very relatable, etc. And it necessarily follows a similar format. She was funny, and no-nonsense. Very unglamorous too. And obviously very skilled. She was a middle aged woman by the time she got on TV. It was all about the food and her character. I can't say she was a huge influence for me because I never knew she existed until some Youtube chefs kept referring to her and I checked out some of her stuff. Anyway, I loved the bit of information about her WW II career as a high level intelligence officer. Only makes her more awesome.
- globular-toast 2y ago
  Big difference being Child went to France to train as a cook and spent a long time there (she learnt French). There were techniques and recipes that simply weren't available to the English speaking world at the time. It's different nowadays, especially with English being so much more dominant. It's easy for us to find someone French doing a video in English. As of about 10 years ago there was still a bit more to learn if you learnt French, but the amount of stuff left is shrinking. For anyone who wants to learn to cook my advice is not to learn recipes but instead learn ingredients, tools and techniques. Good books like Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking dedicate many pages to this before they get into recipes (this book incidentally sets out the ingredients better than any other cooking book or website I've ever seen). Where YouTube shines is the techniques. Books do an admirable job of describing kneading, but nothing beats seeing someone do it. That's how we really learn this stuff, and must of us don't have a parent to learn from these days. So watch YouTube videos, but pay extra special attention to what they are doing, more so than what they are saying (you could have just read that part).
082349872349872 2y ago
> “Mastery” was not direct imitation but an ability to vary and adapt to circumstances. compare Rombauer's epigraphic choice of Goethe: > "That which thy fathers have bequeathed to thee, earn it anew if thou wouldst possess it."
andrewclunn 2y ago
[flagged]
- christophilus 2y ago
  It seems to be the nature of celebrity that it doesn’t matter why someone is a celebrity. See the Kardashians among thousands of other examples. Anyway, Julia Childs was in fact great.
- burkaman 2y ago
  This doesn't make any sense. Julia Child was a spy herself well before she was married, that's how she met her husband. Later in life the government decided he was a communist and interrogated him, and then Julia didn't become famous until after he retired from the government. Her first show aired a year after his retirement.
- jonstewart 2y ago
  I encourage you to read a couple dozen cookbooks and then read Mastering the Art of French Cooking and then come back here and issue a mea culpa.
- stcroixx 2y ago
  She didn't write her book alone. Her partners were amazing. The result speaks for itself really. Anyone would be a better cook having read it and learned the fundamentals. Bridges a gap between French and American culture that benefits an American reader. Several recipes are 'best-of' for me. I have too many chickens so quiche is a staple at my house and I've tried so many recipes, but her's are my go to always. Even the book itself is beautiful, right down to the layout and font.
aklemm 2y ago
Just skimming so far, but this looks like a proper treatment of Child's work. Exciting! She was a genius.
jonstewart 2y ago
I tried looking on youtube for any videos of the RISD Universal Design kitchens, but came up with a bunch of home renovation videos. Would love a link here if anyone can find them.
- swatche 2y ago
  Not on YouTube, but here is a video I found in the RISD Archives showing the Min and Max kitchens: https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/archives_universalkitchen_videos/57/ https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/archives_universalkitchen_vi...
unfocused 2y ago
I highly recommend watching Jacques Pepin videos as well as Julia and Jacques. Jacques Pepin is alive and well and some of his recipes are just 2 to 3 ingredients and easy to make. And yes, he is highly technical but explains things so easily to regular people like me. My kids love this recipe: https://youtu.be/zjv_pAmiqhQ?si=63ppn2hCUBiQKiVG https://youtu.be/zjv_pAmiqhQ?si=63ppn2hCUBiQKiVG
- jjeaff 2y ago
  Pepín is an excellent chef to learn from. Because most of his recipes focus on technique and simplicity rather than recipe and seasoning. One of the biggest mistakes that I think people make is just not cooking things to the correct doneness at the right temperatures and times. Often people think that a fancy mix of spices and seasonings is what is important. I grew up not liking chicken or pork or steak unless it was in something because I had never had perfectly cooked chicken, pork chops, or steaks it was always cooked to well done and so dry you needed steak sauce. My parents grew up in an era where everyone feared undercooked meat. especially pork. And it's such a shame because I grew up on a cattle ranch. We would butcher a cow for ourselves every year. Grass fed, but lean, and butcher to thin steaks because you can cook them to saw dust a lot quicker that way. Now, I get beef from the ranch after fattening and have it butchered to steaks at least an inch thick and I always cook with a thermometer and usually just salt. A well done vs medium rare steak is such a night and day difference. Same with pork and chicken, although I prefer them both a little closer to medium.
  - downut 2y ago
    Well done! I mean you got out of the fire and into the fat. Sorry. Oh, I so feel for those sacrificial cows, if they knew how their corporeal selves would be so disrespected. "I always cook with a thermometer" Not bad, not bad at all, but! I just hardwood grilled another Choice 1" thick steak cut from a full rib roast which was aged a week. Woulda done two weeks but I got hungry. I thought about the thermometer because I wanted perfect (for us 115F, burnt outside, warm inside) but the finger press worked perfect as a doneness detector. Fresh ground Telicherry pepper, salt, and a light marinade of Worcestershire Sauce made for a truly memorable meal. Had some today left over: pepper, salt, and little Worcestershire to moisten it all up. Outstanding. Still gonna go the full two weeks next time. Now let us talk fish. Or seafood in general. Somebody like Pepín knows how to do those too, and it's quite simple: intensely fresh, cooked to barely done, which is different for say salmon and tuna or an oyster vs. grouper and flounder or freshwater bass or a lobster. No need for fancy sauces or seasonings (blackening, I'm looking at you). When cooking for family the pork and chicken are still moist and tender, but with guests and modern sourcing they get the dry shoe and a great sauce unfortunately. I see a lot of people focusing on Julia's videos (and videos in general) but I don't think those were her major contribution. Translating the French culinary curriculum into US vernacular measurements and sourcing, via the books, was her contribution. I stand in awe at how good they are, so many decades later.
gowld 2y ago
"She did not dumb things down but broke them down, creating entry points for American cooks in their home kitchens" This is an important lesson for educators, communicators, and colleagues. Too many people think that "accessible" and "approachable" or "simple" is "dumb" or "stupid", and that things have to be hard and complex to be good or smart.
lvl155 2y ago
I lived a couple of houses down from her Cambridge home. Was a big fan of hers growing up so it was a nice treat to shop at Savenor’s as an adult.
DoreenMichele 2y ago
I didn't know she was so influential with regards to kitchen design and universal or inclusive design. Wonderful article with a lot of depth and much food for thought for anyone interested in trying to find solutions for this problem space. Americans strikes me as being in crisis due to various social factors making full-time wives and moms relatively rare. Our food culture, recipes, kitchens, home design etc etc are rooted in an implicit assumption that your wife or mom is doing the grocery shopping, cooking, keeping track of your health issues and dietary needs etc when this is no longer true for most people. There seems to be an endless stream of people complaining they either don't have time to cook or they are fat and broke from consuming takeout and an endless stream of companies trying to address the issue, such as meal delivery companies. I like Julia Child's skepticism about the effectiveness of productizing the space as the only or prime solution. It seems likely to me we need to rethink and rework our food culture so everyone can eat adequately, even if they don't have some privileged life with a high quality kitchen and full-time wife and mom taking care of all the nutritional concerns and logistics behind that, which are substantial.
- artificialLimbs 2y ago
  What would be the benefits? Sounds like we should prioritize family, as has been tradition for the entirety of human existence. The new approach of ‘everyone has a house/dwelling and their own independent life apart from anyone’ is the experiment.
  - DoreenMichele 2y ago
    Off the top of my head, in no particular order and probably not comprehensive: Improved health for people not living that way. More freedom to live as you choose. Heteronormative culture has long pressured young people to get married and have kids and told them from birth they are straight without giving them time to figure out for themselves what their sexual orientation is. Freedom to leave a marriage that isn't working because you no longer are a prisoner of the fact that your wife knows all your health issues and the dietary restrictions they dictate and cooks better than you, so she is essentially irreplaceable because that catalog of data about you isn't readily replaced by merely marrying a good cook -- assuming you can even arrange to remarry immediately and aren't forced to feed yourself (inadequately) for months or years while looking for a wife Fewer mental health issues from society no longer dictating to everyone "You will be straight, don't confuse us with the facts. You will fall in love with The One meant for you, never mind the overwhelming evidence this is the exception not the rule. You will fit your entire life around tasks society decided are yours at birth due to the bits between your legs." Less homophobia, less transphobia, less misogyny, more economic stability due to more personal flexibility.

130 points by tintinnabula 2y ago

Every story I read about Julia Child makes me admire her more and more. I also remember an NPR story about her creating shark repellent during WW2 to protect undersea mines.

unwind 2y ago
That is an epic use of "protect" in a very unexpected way. Thanks.
- gowld 2y ago
  It protects the sharks too!

Loughla 2y ago

The quote of hers, "If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know?" Is modified and used for anytime my family drops something. That woman was a cultural treasure.

bluedino 2y ago
I call it concrete seasoning when I drop something off the grill
- dugmartin 2y ago
  A friend in high school that worked at a steak house chain called it “floor spice”. He said it was often intentionally applied when rude customers demanded their steak be cooked more. Never send back food.
  - rfrey 2y ago
    > Never send back food. I like my steak rare. But if someone doesn't, and the kitchen messes it up, the correct response is to either choke it down, or leave a $65 meal uneaten on your plate?
    - qup 2y ago
      The answer lies in how much you like the taste of floor spice.
    - mhuffman 2y ago
      Considering it is a teenager or young 20s person in the kitchen getting paid just above minimum wage and doesn't care about you at all ... yes?
      - whtsthmttrmn 2y ago
        [flagged]
        mhuffman 2y ago
        I agree that it does not, however real life sucks sometimes.
        throwanem 2y ago
        Solving problems like this is why God made front-of-house managers. Ask for one - politely, and with clarity that you're not blaming your server or indeed anyone individually for anything - behave yourself like a grownup in the resulting conversation, and it's amazing how well things can go. I know, I know, the Karen stereotype. But that isn't about conversations on the quality of service; it's about nominal adults behaving shamefully childish in public. Median American public behavior, especially in restaurants, sets a bar so shockingly low that anyone capable of disciplining their emotions in the slightest degree easily excels it.
      - kamalamomala 2y ago
euroderf 2y ago
Five-minute rule.

StayTrue 2y ago

Similar/related: https://www.hermanmiller.com/stories/why-magazine/home-ergonomics/ https://www.hermanmiller.com/stories/why-magazine/home-ergon...

jillesvangurp 2y ago

I got into cooking via Youtube. Youtube cooks became a thing about fifteen years ago. People like Jamie Oliver started promoting first themselves and then others on Youtube and I sort of started watching that stuff to relax. The genius of this was that Jamie Oliver was of course famous but the people he promoted weren't. They were just ordinary people that pointed a camera at themselves while they were cooking stuff. Quite a few of them are still on Youtube and have successful channels now. And of course others have come along. There are many thousands of people regularly uploading stuff. These days if I want to learn how to make something, Youtube is the first place to look. It took me a ridiculously long time to realize that I could do some cooking myself. If you are a programmer (like me), my realization was that if I can follow instructions and implement some complex algorithm, cooking is a lot easier. And even the failures can be tasty. Julia Childs was basically doing the same thing as these Youtube chefs but about half a century earlier. You can find quite a bit of her shows on Youtube. But it's got a similar vibe to it: shot at home, very passionate about what she did, very relatable, etc. And it necessarily follows a similar format. She was funny, and no-nonsense. Very unglamorous too. And obviously very skilled. She was a middle aged woman by the time she got on TV. It was all about the food and her character. I can't say she was a huge influence for me because I never knew she existed until some Youtube chefs kept referring to her and I checked out some of her stuff. Anyway, I loved the bit of information about her WW II career as a high level intelligence officer. Only makes her more awesome.

globular-toast 2y ago
Big difference being Child went to France to train as a cook and spent a long time there (she learnt French). There were techniques and recipes that simply weren't available to the English speaking world at the time. It's different nowadays, especially with English being so much more dominant. It's easy for us to find someone French doing a video in English. As of about 10 years ago there was still a bit more to learn if you learnt French, but the amount of stuff left is shrinking. For anyone who wants to learn to cook my advice is not to learn recipes but instead learn ingredients, tools and techniques. Good books like Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking dedicate many pages to this before they get into recipes (this book incidentally sets out the ingredients better than any other cooking book or website I've ever seen). Where YouTube shines is the techniques. Books do an admirable job of describing kneading, but nothing beats seeing someone do it. That's how we really learn this stuff, and must of us don't have a parent to learn from these days. So watch YouTube videos, but pay extra special attention to what they are doing, more so than what they are saying (you could have just read that part).

082349872349872 2y ago

> “Mastery” was not direct imitation but an ability to vary and adapt to circumstances. compare Rombauer's epigraphic choice of Goethe: > "That which thy fathers have bequeathed to thee, earn it anew if thou wouldst possess it."

andrewclunn 2y ago

[flagged]

christophilus 2y ago
It seems to be the nature of celebrity that it doesn’t matter why someone is a celebrity. See the Kardashians among thousands of other examples. Anyway, Julia Childs was in fact great.
burkaman 2y ago
This doesn't make any sense. Julia Child was a spy herself well before she was married, that's how she met her husband. Later in life the government decided he was a communist and interrogated him, and then Julia didn't become famous until after he retired from the government. Her first show aired a year after his retirement.
jonstewart 2y ago
I encourage you to read a couple dozen cookbooks and then read Mastering the Art of French Cooking and then come back here and issue a mea culpa.
stcroixx 2y ago
She didn't write her book alone. Her partners were amazing. The result speaks for itself really. Anyone would be a better cook having read it and learned the fundamentals. Bridges a gap between French and American culture that benefits an American reader. Several recipes are 'best-of' for me. I have too many chickens so quiche is a staple at my house and I've tried so many recipes, but her's are my go to always. Even the book itself is beautiful, right down to the layout and font.

aklemm 2y ago

Just skimming so far, but this looks like a proper treatment of Child's work. Exciting! She was a genius.

jonstewart 2y ago

I tried looking on youtube for any videos of the RISD Universal Design kitchens, but came up with a bunch of home renovation videos. Would love a link here if anyone can find them.

swatche 2y ago
Not on YouTube, but here is a video I found in the RISD Archives showing the Min and Max kitchens: https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/archives_universalkitchen_videos/57/ https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/archives_universalkitchen_vi...

unfocused 2y ago

I highly recommend watching Jacques Pepin videos as well as Julia and Jacques. Jacques Pepin is alive and well and some of his recipes are just 2 to 3 ingredients and easy to make. And yes, he is highly technical but explains things so easily to regular people like me. My kids love this recipe: https://youtu.be/zjv_pAmiqhQ?si=63ppn2hCUBiQKiVG https://youtu.be/zjv_pAmiqhQ?si=63ppn2hCUBiQKiVG

jjeaff 2y ago
Pepín is an excellent chef to learn from. Because most of his recipes focus on technique and simplicity rather than recipe and seasoning. One of the biggest mistakes that I think people make is just not cooking things to the correct doneness at the right temperatures and times. Often people think that a fancy mix of spices and seasonings is what is important. I grew up not liking chicken or pork or steak unless it was in something because I had never had perfectly cooked chicken, pork chops, or steaks it was always cooked to well done and so dry you needed steak sauce. My parents grew up in an era where everyone feared undercooked meat. especially pork. And it's such a shame because I grew up on a cattle ranch. We would butcher a cow for ourselves every year. Grass fed, but lean, and butcher to thin steaks because you can cook them to saw dust a lot quicker that way. Now, I get beef from the ranch after fattening and have it butchered to steaks at least an inch thick and I always cook with a thermometer and usually just salt. A well done vs medium rare steak is such a night and day difference. Same with pork and chicken, although I prefer them both a little closer to medium.
- downut 2y ago
  Well done! I mean you got out of the fire and into the fat. Sorry. Oh, I so feel for those sacrificial cows, if they knew how their corporeal selves would be so disrespected. "I always cook with a thermometer" Not bad, not bad at all, but! I just hardwood grilled another Choice 1" thick steak cut from a full rib roast which was aged a week. Woulda done two weeks but I got hungry. I thought about the thermometer because I wanted perfect (for us 115F, burnt outside, warm inside) but the finger press worked perfect as a doneness detector. Fresh ground Telicherry pepper, salt, and a light marinade of Worcestershire Sauce made for a truly memorable meal. Had some today left over: pepper, salt, and little Worcestershire to moisten it all up. Outstanding. Still gonna go the full two weeks next time. Now let us talk fish. Or seafood in general. Somebody like Pepín knows how to do those too, and it's quite simple: intensely fresh, cooked to barely done, which is different for say salmon and tuna or an oyster vs. grouper and flounder or freshwater bass or a lobster. No need for fancy sauces or seasonings (blackening, I'm looking at you). When cooking for family the pork and chicken are still moist and tender, but with guests and modern sourcing they get the dry shoe and a great sauce unfortunately. I see a lot of people focusing on Julia's videos (and videos in general) but I don't think those were her major contribution. Translating the French culinary curriculum into US vernacular measurements and sourcing, via the books, was her contribution. I stand in awe at how good they are, so many decades later.

gowld 2y ago

"She did not dumb things down but broke them down, creating entry points for American cooks in their home kitchens" This is an important lesson for educators, communicators, and colleagues. Too many people think that "accessible" and "approachable" or "simple" is "dumb" or "stupid", and that things have to be hard and complex to be good or smart.

lvl155 2y ago

I lived a couple of houses down from her Cambridge home. Was a big fan of hers growing up so it was a nice treat to shop at Savenor’s as an adult.

DoreenMichele 2y ago

I didn't know she was so influential with regards to kitchen design and universal or inclusive design. Wonderful article with a lot of depth and much food for thought for anyone interested in trying to find solutions for this problem space. Americans strikes me as being in crisis due to various social factors making full-time wives and moms relatively rare. Our food culture, recipes, kitchens, home design etc etc are rooted in an implicit assumption that your wife or mom is doing the grocery shopping, cooking, keeping track of your health issues and dietary needs etc when this is no longer true for most people. There seems to be an endless stream of people complaining they either don't have time to cook or they are fat and broke from consuming takeout and an endless stream of companies trying to address the issue, such as meal delivery companies. I like Julia Child's skepticism about the effectiveness of productizing the space as the only or prime solution. It seems likely to me we need to rethink and rework our food culture so everyone can eat adequately, even if they don't have some privileged life with a high quality kitchen and full-time wife and mom taking care of all the nutritional concerns and logistics behind that, which are substantial.

artificialLimbs 2y ago
What would be the benefits? Sounds like we should prioritize family, as has been tradition for the entirety of human existence. The new approach of ‘everyone has a house/dwelling and their own independent life apart from anyone’ is the experiment.
- DoreenMichele 2y ago
  Off the top of my head, in no particular order and probably not comprehensive: Improved health for people not living that way. More freedom to live as you choose. Heteronormative culture has long pressured young people to get married and have kids and told them from birth they are straight without giving them time to figure out for themselves what their sexual orientation is. Freedom to leave a marriage that isn't working because you no longer are a prisoner of the fact that your wife knows all your health issues and the dietary restrictions they dictate and cooks better than you, so she is essentially irreplaceable because that catalog of data about you isn't readily replaced by merely marrying a good cook -- assuming you can even arrange to remarry immediately and aren't forced to feed yourself (inadequately) for months or years while looking for a wife Fewer mental health issues from society no longer dictating to everyone "You will be straight, don't confuse us with the facts. You will fall in love with The One meant for you, never mind the overwhelming evidence this is the exception not the rule. You will fit your entire life around tasks society decided are yours at birth due to the bits between your legs." Less homophobia, less transphobia, less misogyny, more economic stability due to more personal flexibility.