Free Laura Shapiro by Julia Child Page A

I think it is a fine institution which should be enjoyed by all to the fullest extent.”) Avis loved England, Julia much preferred France; Avis liked martinis, Julia begged her to try a good red wine. Early on, the two friends exchanged photographs. “That is a wonderfully worldly expression you have on,” Julia remarked admiringly. “It is the face I always try to wear when I am in New York, with no success.” She also added relevant physical details:
    Paul, 5'11'', weight 175, very muscley. He has done lots of woodchopping, etc., and is a 3rd-degree black-belt Judo man (which is a remarkable thing).
    Julia, 6 ft. plus, weight 150 to 160. Bosom not as copious as she would wish, but has noticed that Botticelli bosoms are not big either. Legs OK, according to husband. Freckles.
    And she sent interior snapshots as well. Paul, she said, was an intellectual, always ready to probe new ideas, always working on training his mind. “Me, I am not an intellectual,” she admitted. “Except for La Cuisine, I find I have to push myself to build up a thirst for how the atomic bomb works, or a study of Buddhism.” She attributed this problem to her childhood in a “useless and wasteful class of society.” Not until she joined the OSS and was thrown in with “intellectuals and academicians” did she find the sort of people she liked. “You, however, have had years of it,” she reflected. Across the ocean, in a house near Harvard Square, Avis was living one of Julia’s imagined lives, just as Simca in her French kitchen was living another.
    But for the first seven years of their friendship, Julia and Avis talked more than anything else about the book. As soon as the sauces chapter was fully revised, Julia sent it to Avis asking for an honest opinion as well as any advice about publishing. Avis turned every page with mounting admiration. This was a revelatory approach to French cooking: the infrastructure of culinary methods was as pertinent as the recipes, and the recipes were the most precise and logical she had ever seen. A good American cook would be able to follow them, not necessarily with ease, but at least with a sense of confidence that the authors were never going to leave her in the lurch. And, as she found in the kitchen, the recipes worked. The ingredients came together just as the instructions said they would, and the sauces tasted French. She quickly wrote back to Julia: she must keep right on working; she must not sign with Ives Washburn; Avis was going to send the chapter to a friend at Houghton Mifflin, which was a major publishing company based in Boston, and the book would be handled the way it deserved.
    Julia was overjoyed—“I would say excited, which is my real reaction, but am learning not to use that word because of its more carnal implications in French!” The chapter went to Dorothy de Santillana, managing editor at Houghton Mifflin, who was, Avis reported, “tickled pink” with the depth and expertise of what she saw. A contract followed, along with an impressive advance of $750. “HOORAY,” typed Julia. “The book will be dedicated to you, my dear, and to La Belle France.” Avis refused the dedication but agreed to be the chief editorial go-between. It had all happened in less than six weeks. Julia tried to be realistic about what lay ahead: she thought it would be a year, at least, before she and her two coauthors completed the manuscript. Her prediction was off by six years, but in every other respect she understood just where she stood in her life. As she said to Avis, the midwife who would see her through a long labor, “I realize with awesome seriousness that the real work is about to begin.”

Chapter 3
How to Make Things Taste the Way They Should
    F RENCH COOKING for American cooks? It had to be an oxymoron. How could these two incompatible beasts ever be yoked together? But Julia knew it was possible,