Julia Child Quotes

What a marvelous resource soup is for the thrifty cook - it solves the ham-bone and lamb-bone problems, the everlasting Thanksgiving turkey, the extra vegetables.

A party without cake is really just a meeting.

It is hard to imagine a civilization without onions.

An asbestos mat, if necessary

With enough butter, anything is good

Wine is one of the agreeable and essential ingredients of life

I was never a spy. I was with the OSS organization. We had a number of women, but we were all office help.

We ought to enjoy our food, we ought to take time and care and prepare it correctly, and we ought to have fun doing it and make it a communal event.

How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like kleenex?

Once you have mastered a technique, you barely have to look at a recipe again

Fake food
I mean those patented substances chemically flavored and mechanically bulked out to kill the appetite and deceive the gut
is unnatural, almost immoral, a bane to good eating and good cooking.

Well, all I know is this - nothing you ever learn is really wasted, and will sometime be used.

Many of the delicious soups you eat in French homes and little restaurants are made just this way, with a leek-and-potato base to which leftover vegetables or sauces and a few fresh items are added.

I don't use the word gourmet. The word doesn't mean anything anymore. 'Gourmet' makes it sound like someone is putting sherry wine in the corn-flake casserole.

It was fun, although we felt like pawns, or prawns, in the maelstrom.

In department stores, so much kitchen equipment is bought indiscriminately by people who just come in for men's underwear.

A passionate interest in what you do is the secret of enjoying life ... whether it is helping old people or children, or making cheese or growing earthworms.

Remember, 'No one's more important than people'! In other words, friendship is the most important thing
not career or housework, or one's fatigue
and it needs to be tended and nurtured.

Sometimes ... it takes me an entire day to write a recipe, to communicate it correctly. It's really like writing a little short story.

In Paris in the 1950s, I had the supreme good fortune to study with a remarkably able group of chefs. From them I learned why good French good is an art, and why it makes such sublime eating: nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should. Good results require that one take time and care. If one doesn't use the freshest ingredients or read the whole recipe before starting, and if one rushes through the cooking, the result will be an inferior taste and texture--a gummy beef Wellington, say. But a careful approach will result in a magnificent burst of flavor, a thoroughly satisfying meal, perhaps even a life-changing experience.

Such was the case with the sole meunière I ate at La Couronne on my first day in France, in November 1948. It was an epiphany.

In all the years since the succulent meal, I have yet to lose the feelings of wonder and excitement that it inspired in me. I can still almost taste it. And thinking back on it now reminds me that the pleasures of table, and of life, are infinite--toujours bon appétit!

Cassoulet, that best of bean feasts, is everyday fare for a peasant but ambrosia for a gastronome, though its ideal consumer is a 300-pound blocking back who has been splitting firewood nonstop for the last twelve hours on a subzero day in Manitoba.

As a girl, I had zero interest in the stove. I've always had a healthy appetite, especially for the wonderful meat and the fresh produce of California, but I was never encouraged to cook and just didn't see the point in it.

Remember, you are all alone in the kitchen and no one can see you.

People were hysterical about Communism the way people today are hysterical about flag burning. I'm really against these people who try to show that they're great patriots, because they're not thinking, they're just being hysterical.

It's simply a very romantic place. Just one look at any of those streets, and you couldn't be anywhere else - it's so beautiful, and there's that location, and the sense of the free spirit. Who couldn't become ravenous in such a place?

Eating is the secret to good cooking.

The war broke out, and I wanted to do something to aid my country in a time of crisis. I was too tall for the WACs and WAVES, but eventually joined the OSS and set out into the world looking for adventure.

If variety is the spice of life, then my life must be one of the spiciest you ever heard of. A curry of a life. -Paul Child

In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.

The art of bread making can become a consuming hobby, and no matter how often and how many kinds of bread one has made, there always seems to be something new to learn.

Ye gods! But you're not standing around holding it by the hand all this time. No. [ ... ] [T]he dough takes care of itself. [ ... ] While you cannot speed up the process, you can slow it down at any point by setting the dough in a cooler place [ ... ] then continue where you left off, when you are ready to do so. In other words, you are the boss of that dough.

I had come to the conclusion that I must really be French, only no one had ever informed me of this fact. I loved the people, the food, the lay of the land, the civilized atmosphere, and the generous pace of life.

We had a happy marriage because we were together all the time. We were friends as well as husband and wife. We just had a good time.

Small helpings, no seconds, no snacking, and a little bit of everything. - Julia Child

Cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. And cooking draws upon your every talent
science, mathematics, energy, history, experience
and the more experience you have, the less likely are your experiments to end in drivel and disaster. The more you know, the more you can create.

My sievelike mind didn't want to lock away dates and details; it wanted to float and meander. If I mixed all those facts and these up with a little gelatine and egg white, I wondered, would they stick together better?

Freshness is essential. That makes all the difference.

I always give my bird a generous butter massage before I put it in the oven. Why? Because I think the chicken likes it
and, more important, I like to give it.

I love good, fresh food cooked by someone who knows what he's doing.

The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.

You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients.

In fact, I didn't like traveling first class at all. Yes, it was nice to have a bathroom in a hotel and fine service at breakfast...but none of it seemed foreign enough for me. It was all so pleasantly bland that I felt as if I were back on the SS America. I don't like it when everyone speaks perfect English; I'd much rather struggle with my phrasebook.

Fine # wine is a living liquid ... Its life comprises youth, maturity, old age, and death.

The waiters carried themselves with a quiet joy, as if their entire mission in life was to make their customers feel comfortable and well tended.

The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken.

I'm not wild about those twenty-four hour marinades

Nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should.

A house without a cat is like a day without sunshine, a pie without fromage, a dinner without wine.

Food, like the people who eat it, can be stimulated by wine or spirits. And, as with people, it can also be spoiled.

When the war broke out I decided I would be very patriotic. Standing my full height. I presented myself to the Wacs and the to the Waves. And I was rejected - I was an inch too tall.

Operational proof ... it's all theory until you see for yourself whether or not something works.

Of course, an old wine is like an old lady, and traveling can disturb her.

But how nice it is that one can come to know someone just through correspondence, and become really passionate friends.

Fat gives things flavor.

I opened the school's booklet, found the recipes from the examination - oeufs mollets with sauce béarnaise, côtelettes de veau en surprise and crème renversée au caramel - and whipped them all up in a cold, clean fury. Then I ate them.

One of the secrets, and pleasures, of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed.

MODERATION.SMALL HELPINGS. SAMPLE A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING. THESE ARE THE SECRETS OF HAPPINESS AND GOOD HEALTH.

Food like love is a deeply emotional matter.

I admired the English immensely for all that they had endured, and they were certainly honorable, and stopped their cars for pedestrians, and called you "sir" and "madam," and so on. But after a week there, I began to feel wild. It was those ruddy English faces, so held in by duty, the sense of "what is done" and "what is not done," and always swigging tea and chirping, that made me want to scream like a hyena

In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and freedom; for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.

The sweetness and generosity and politeness and gentleness and humanity of the French had shown me how lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly.

It's hard to imagine a civilization without onions; in one form or another their flavor blends into almost everything in the meal except the desert.

Julie's cookery is actually improving," Paul wrote Charlie [his twin]. "I didn't quite believe it would, just between us, but it really is. It's simpler, more classical ... I envy her this chance. It would be such fun to be doing it at the same time with her.

Wine is a living liquid containing no preservatives. Its life cycle comprises youth, maturity, old age, and death. When not treated with reasonable respect it will sicken and die.

If you're not ready to fail, you're not going to learn how to cook.

If you drop the lamb, just pick it up. Who's going to know?

It seemed that in Paris you could discuss classic literature or architecture or great music with everyone from the garbage collector to the mayor.

Cooking hasn't yet been accepted as the art form it is. It should be on the level with any of the other art forms.

Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music.

Any disaster is a learning process.

No one's more important than people.

This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!

I think one of the terrible things today is that people have this deathly fear of food: fear of eggs, say, or fear of butter. Most doctors feel that you can have a little bit of everything.

The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook.

We are so bemused by our own petard, that we are unable to look at things objectively.

I believe in red meat. I often said: red meat and gin.

Cooking is one failure after another, and that's how you finally learn.

The average Frenchman would shrug, as if to say: These notions of yours are all very fascinating, no doubt, but we make a decent living. Nobody has ulcers. I have time to work on my monograph about Balzac, and my foreman enjoys his espaliered pear trees. I think as a matter of fact, we do not wish to make the changes that you suggest.

Celebrity has its uses. I can always get a seat in any restaurant.
Source: Esquire Magazine, June 2000 original edition

Of course, our servings had assumed that one was making at least a three-course meal à la française. But that wasn't the American style of eating, so we had to compromise.

Had been a year earlier. Looking back, it had been a year of growth. Paul's personality had enlarged, he'd gained further wisdom, if not salary,

Never apologize for your cooking.

I think careful cooking is love, don't you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who's close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give.

Pro-choice is the only way to be
because women are human beings, after all, and should be treated as such.

The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they're right if you love to be with them all the time.

I love to teach - that's my role.

The perfect dressing is essential to the perfect salad, and I see no reason whatsoever for using a bottled dressing, which may have been sitting on the grocery shelf for weeks, even months - even years.

I was kind of an innocent hayseed from a middle-class, utterly nonintellectual background.

If a tourist enters a food stall thinking he's going to be cheated, the salesman will sense this and obligingly cheat him. But if a Frenchman senses that a visitor is delighted to be in his store, and takes a genuine interest in what is for sale, then he'll just open up like a flower.

I'm very much for making everything safe. The more natural the means we use to raise our vegetables and get rid of bugs, the better.

Romance is the icing but love is the cake.

I have trouble with toast. Toast is very difficult. You have to watch it all the time or it burns up.

The spectacle of this lovely nation, with its great agricultural wealth and its cultural riches , continually stepping on its own toes, made me wonder if France suffered a kind of national neurosis

Someone may offer you a freshly caught whole large fish, like a salmon or striped bass. Don't panic - take it!

In Paris and later in Marseille, I was surrounded by some of the best food in the world, and I had an enthusiastic audience in my husband, so it seemed only logical that I should learn how to cook 'la cuisine bourgeoise' - good, traditional French home cooking.

She was my first cat ever, and I thought she was marvelous.

You learn to cook so that you don't have to be a slave to recipes. You get what's in season and you know what to do with it.

After we'd moved into 81, we had placed an order for a phone, and waited. First a man came by to see if we lived where we said we did. Then two men visited to make a "study" of our situation. Then another man appeared to find out if we really wanted a phone. The process was very French, and made me laugh, especially when I thought of how quickly such a transaction would have taken place in the States.

I hate organized religion. I think you have to love thy neighbor as thyself. I think you have to pick your own God and be true to him. I always say 'him' rather than 'her.' Maybe it's because of my generation, but I don't like the idea of a female God. I see God as a benevolent male.

The Parisian grocers insisted that I interact with them personally: if I wasn't willing to take the time to get to know them and their wares, then I would not go home with the freshest legumes or cuts of meat in my basket. They certainly made me work for my supper-- but, oh, what suppers!