Julia Child: Bon appétit

Celebrated cook taught America to relish life's bounty

By Sylvia Lindman MSNBC contributor
MSNBC News

Julia Child, the celebrated cook, author and television personality who elevated the nation's culinary standards, died in her sleep early Friday morning at an assisted living home in Montecito, Calif. She was 91. As America's gastronomic guru, she had no peer. She taught us to relish food and wine as a way of appreciating life's bounty. From this brave new world of food, there is no turning back.

Before Julia, whisks, soufflé dishes and copper pans were novelties brought home from France by pretentious tourists. After Julia, they were standard American kitchen battery. Before Julia, French cooking was an effete art form. After Julia, French cuisine was within reach of any home cook. Her joie de vivre, ability to explain techniques, and what-me-worry approach to mistakes made serious cooking fun.

Child gave the country a taste of its culinary future in February 1962 when she went to a Boston television station to promote her first book, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." To liven up the interview, she brought an omelet pan, a whisk, an apron and a dozen eggs and chattily whipped up an omelet in front of the cameras.

That soon led to her first public television series, "The French Chef," which debuted on Feb. 11, 1963, and made her a star at the age of 50. She went on to headline eight more television series and publish nine more cookbooks, including The French Chef Cookbook (1968), a second volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1970) and From Julia Child's Kitchen (1975).

She also appeared on the cover of Time magazine (1967), hosted TV specials, wrote articles for publications such as Food & Wine and Parade, and co-founded the American Institute of Wine and Food. She changed not only home entertaining but restaurant dining, brought cooking to prime-time television, and was the first big celebrity chef. Many of today's top chefs, from Alice Waters to Emeril Lagasse, credit her inspiration.