Exhibit Curator
Dates: August, 2021 – March, 2022
Venue: Harry Ransom Center
Over the past century, the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house has brought some of the most celebrated cookbook authors to press – James Beard, Craig Claiborne, Madhur Jaffrey, Edna Lewis, and Julia Child among them.
Sixty years ago, Knopf published a groundbreaking French cookbook by then-unknown authors Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, and Julia Child. The project had been in development for over a decade, and with the assistance of Knopf editor Judith Jones, the manuscript was shaped into one of the most celebrated cookbooks of the twentieth century.
For the first time, Mastering the Art of French Cooking made classic French cuisine accessible to the average home cook by teaching skills and recipes one normally would have to learn by training at a culinary school or studying under a master chef. It helped inspire a new revolution in American cooking that favored fresh ingredients over fast food and packaged instant meals.
The Ransom Center holds over 1,500 boxes of records from the Knopf publishing house, including over a year of letters between Julia Child and editor Judith Jones leading up to the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in October, 1961.
This display was made possible with the assistance of the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and Culinary Arts and the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University.