Wisdom From the Kitchen of Julia Child
For many of us, one of our first memories of cooking is listening to the jovial voice of a very tall woman on PBS, chuckling as she methodically deboned a chicken or loaded a dish with butter.
Julia Child was — and still is — an icon in the cooking world. She was born in California in 1912, and in 1949 moved with her husband to Paris, where she enrolled in the French cooking school Cordon Bleu as the only woman in her class.
In 1961, after co-writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking, she returned to the United States, and two years later, officially introduced the country to the art of French cuisine with the debut of her television show The French Chef.
Her shows were drenched in joy and butter. Viewers loved her cheerful wobbly voice, her zeal to brandish a large knife, her ability to make fancy cooking accessible, and her bowlful of quips and life lessons in each episode.
Child didn’t just have sage wisdom about food, though. She looked at life through the lens of cooking, and many of her insightful comments can apply both in and out of the kitchen. Whether it’s using a dropped piece of meat as a metaphor for moving forward after making a mistake, or reflecting on how flipping something in a pan is a way to break free from fear, the multiple layers of meaning make her words all the more delicious.
The 10 quotes below are some of the tastiest around. In the words of Child herself, bon appetit!
On Letting Go
On Excellence
On Taking Risks
On Going for It
On Diligence
On Confidence
On Discipline
On Living to the Fullest
On Indecision
On Creativity
