Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1

Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1

Overview

For over fifty years, this New York Times bestseller has been the definitive cookbook on French cuisine for American readers. It deserves a place of honor in every kitchen.

Featuring 524 delicious recipes and over 100 instructive illustrations to guide readers every step of the way, Mastering the Art of French Cooking offers something for everyone, from seasoned experts to beginners who love good food and long to reproduce the savory delights of French cuisine.

Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louisette Bertholle break down the classic foods of France into a logical sequence of themes and variations rather than presenting an endless and diffuse catalogue of dishes—from historic Gallic masterpieces to the seemingly artless perfection of a dish of spring-green peas. Throughout, the focus is on key recipes that form the backbone of French cookery and lend themselves to an infinite number of elaborations—bound to increase anyone’s culinary repertoire.

“Julia has slowly but surely altered our way of thinking about food. She has taken the fear out of the term ‘haute cuisine.’ She has increased gastronomic awareness a thousandfold by stressing the importance of good foundation and technique, and she has elevated our consciousness to the refined pleasures of dining." —Thomas Keller, The French Laundry

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780394721781
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 09/12/1983
Series: Mastering the Art of French Cooking , #1
Edition description: Updated
Pages: 752
Sales rank: 14,735
Product dimensions: 6.91(w) x 9.89(h) x 1.57(d)

About the Author

JULIA CHILD, a native of California and a Smith College graduate; Simone (“Simca”) Beck, French-born and -educated; and Louisette Bertholle, half French and half American, educated in both countries, represented an even blending of the two backgrounds and were singularly equipped to write about French cooking for Americans. Child studied at Paris’s famous Cordon Bleu, and all three authors worked under various distinguished French chefs. In 1951 they started their own cooking school in Paris, L’Ecole des Trois Gourmandes, at the same time that Mastering the Art of French Cooking was taking shape. After that, Simone Beck published two cookbooks, Simca’s Cuisine in 1972 and New Menus from Simca’s Cuisine in 1979, and she continued to teach cooking in France until her death in 1991. Louisette Bertholle also had several cookery books published. In 1963, Boston’s WGBH launched The French Chef television series, which made Julia Child a national celebrity, earning her the Peabody Award in 1965 and an Emmy in 1966. Several public television shows and numerous cookbooks followed. She died in 2004.

Date of Birth:

August 5, 1912

Date of Death:

August 12, 2004

Place of Birth:

Pasadena, California

Place of Death:

Santa Barbara, California

Education:

B.A., Smith College, 1934; Le Cordon Bleu, 1950

Read an Excerpt

Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I

40th Anniversary Edition
By Julia Child

Knopf

Copyright © 2001 Julia Child
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0375413405
Clafouti (Cherry Flan)

The clafouti (also spelled with a final "s" in both singular and plural) which is traditional in the Limousin during the cherry season is peasant cooking for family meals, and about as simple a dessert to make as you can imagine: a pancake batter poured over fruit in a fireproof dish, then baked in the oven. It looks like a tart, and is usually eaten warm.

(If you have no electric blender, work the eggs into the flour with a wooden spoon, gradually beat in the liquids, then strain the batter through a fine sieve.)

3 cups pitted black cherries

1 1/4 cups milk

2/3 cup granulated sugar

3 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup flour

Powdered sugar in a shaker

For 6 to 8 people

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Use fresh, black, sweet cherries in season. Otherwise use drained, canned, pitted Bing cherries, or frozen sweet cherries, thawed and drained.

Place the milk, 1/3 cup sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, salt, and flour in your blender jar in the order in which they are listed. Cover and blend at top speed for 1 minute.

Pour a 1/4-inch layer of batter in a 7- to 8-cup buttered,fireproof baking dish or pyrex pie plate about 1 1/2 inches deep. Set over moderate heat for a minute or two until a film of batter has set in the bottom of the dish. Remove from the heat. Spread the cherries over the batter and sprinkle on the remaining 1/3 cup of sugar. Pour on the rest of the batter and smooth the surface with the back of a spoon.

Place in middle position of preheated oven and bake for about an hour. The clafouti is done when it has puffed and browned, and a needle or knife plunged into its center comes out clean. Sprinkle top of clafouti with powdered sugar just before bringing it to the table. (The clafouti need not be served hot, but should still be warm. It will sink down slightly as it cools.)

Continues...
Excerpted from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I by Julia Child Copyright © 2001 by Julia Child. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Has it really been 40 years since Julia Child rescued Americans from dreary casseroles? This reissue, clad in a handsome red jacket, is what a cookbook should be: packed with sumptuous recipes, detailed instructions, and precise line drawings. Some of the instructions look daunting, but as Child herself says in the introduction, 'If you can read, you can cook.'"
- Entertainment Weekly

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