Julia Child

Julia Child, 1988

Julia Child (August 15, 1912 - August 13, 2004), television chef and author.

Quotes

• A cookbook is only as good as its worst recipe.
  • Quoted in New York Times obituary

• The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook.
  • Indirect quote on The National (CBC TV), Aug. 13

• I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. … Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed—eh bien, tant pis! Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile … then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile—and learn from her mistakes.
  • My Life In France: Le Cordon Bleu, p. 71

• My, I get so depressed after a poor meal; that's why I can never stay in England for more than a week.
  • Letter to Avis DeVoto, January 30, 1953, collected in As Always Julia ed. Joan Reardon, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2010

• "Too much trouble," "Too expensive," or "Who will know the difference" are death knells for good food.
  • Foreword to Mastering the Art of French Cooking, July 1961

Attributed

• How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like kleenex?”
  • Origins of attribution could be a New York Times Magazine article by Joan Barthel ("How to Avoid TV Dinners While Watching TV" 7 August 1966, p. 34): "'The French Chef'...the program that can be campier than 'Batman,' farther-out than 'Lost in Space' and more penetrating than 'Meet the Press' as it probes the question: Can a Society be Great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?" Article quoted in Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child (Noël Riley Fitch. Doubleday, 1997, p. 308)

Quotes about Julia Child

• I read and read and read—that's how I learned to cook—from M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard.
  • 1978 interview in Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989)

• Julia Child the famous chef said, "I never feel lonely in the kitchen. Food is very friendly."
  • Naomi Shihab Nye "Feeling Wise" in Everything Comes Next (2020)