Any fans of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking? Do you still use it?

[whole milk]

I fell in love with this book after I moved abroad, read it cover to cover like a novel. I still go back to it for advice and inspiration and I've gifted copies to young friends, I don't know how many times over the years.

I'm curious if anyone out there still uses MTAOFC and if so, what are some of your favorite recipes or take aways?

For example, Julia teaches us how to distinguish and use eight basic pastry types for non-desserts whereas most modern cookbooks just have one crust that works across the board for every recipe.

 

[Andy M.]

I have the first volume. I use a couple of recipes from it.

 

[Janet H]

I have this book and still use it extensively. There are great basic techniques covered in concise terms. Always useful.

 

[pepperhead212]

I like both of those volumes. It's been a long time since I used them, but I learned a lot from both, and still use some of the recipes, which I have tweaked, for my use. I also have another favorite book, written by her - From Julia Child's Kitchen - from which I have used a lot of recipes.

 

[taxlady]

I don't have Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I became a fan of JC from watching her on TV. I got another of her books, The Way to Cook. I do still use some of those recipes. I would have considered the name of the book to be arrogant, but JC could get away with it. She was that good.

 

[jennyema]

whereas most modern cookbooks just have one crust that works across the board for every recipe.

Ive never seen a credible cookbook that suggests one type of crust works for every recipe. That’s nuts. But maybe more like 3-4 basic crusts and not Julia’s 8.

Yes, I have her books and use them all the time. They are timeless.

 

[Silversage]

I have both, and have used them extensively over the decades. The last few years, I tend to adapt them a bit, usually to lighten things up. When I was in my 20's and 30's, all that butter and cream didn't bother me, but now my poor old systems just can't handle it the way I used to. But her techniques are so good that I can still follow her instructions.



An aside, today I saw one of my cakes at the top of the DC screen. This was a cake from MTAOFC. I still make it today.

 

[whole milk]

An aside, today I saw one of my cakes at the top of the DC screen. This was a cake from MTAOFC. I still make it today.

I had to pause half a minute to realize you were talking Discuss Cooking and not DC Comics. I was trying to work out how your cake could have gotten onto DC's website.

Oh, I hear you on the cream and butter. My body can digest it just fine, it wants to hold onto it, that's the problem for me.

 

[kb0000]

I think it Julia is an awful cookbook. Julia details the steps of classic French cooking, but nobody wisely does that anymore. I’ve tried making stock from scratch a la Julia, but Tones or I Can’t Believe its Not Bullion is better (perhaps because they load it up with salt). Julia’s 8 page recipe for bread is a flop. It does not produce a baguette (does anybody want to buy 16 unglazed oven tiles?).

Yes, most of the recopies get good results, but times change, and it is now easier to get good results with other simpler, easier procedures. Dried herbs and spices taste different than fresh, but that does not mean that fresh is better. All it means is that the ancients unfortunately did not have access to dried herbs and spices.
I have both Julia books, and it is last place on my list of go to French cookbooks. Its a tie for #1-- Rene Verdon ‘French Cooking for the American Kitchen’, Curnonsky, and “I Know How to Cook”, the #1 best seller in France.

Julia’s later TV show’s French Onion Soup is far superior, and the world’s best French Onion soup if you understand where to modify the stated recipe.

 

[taxlady]

How does "... the ancients unfortunately did not have access to dried herbs and spices." work? Do you really think that ancient peoples didn't dry herbs and other foods?

 

[kb0000]

The flavor of commercial dried herbs is different from home dried. I would also expect there has been genetic manipulation of the plants to improve flavor.

 

[john2007]

To bring this back on topic, here's a reply in support of Mastering the Art of French Cooking:

Criticisms of the book (and Julia Child in general) are sometimes valid. Too much complication for everyday cooking, too much focus on restaurant techniques vs. home cooking (though this is more true of Mastering the Art than of her later books), and so on. But those criticisms miss main purposes of the Mastering books.

I had cooked all my life, but got Volume 1 of Mastering in college after visiting France.

I made her recipe for roast chicken, the one with all the turning and turning and turning. And then I made her cauliflower au gratin. Those two recipes alone are worth the price of the book 10 times over. Tasting those the first time is definitely up there among my most vivid memories.

There was nothing unusual about the recipes, other than the amount of attention and care that Ms. Child demands. But that attention and care is one of the primary things she was trying to teach, and that really changes the way a person approaches cooking.

And then on top of that Mastering is a great guide to cooking through a theme-and-variations approach. So once you have made a few of of Ms. Child's variations, you can recognize other recipes (from any source) that are similar, and can see how the techniques are the same. Also, you become confident to "do your own thing" and cook whatever variations you think up yourself, thus becoming a better cook rather than a mere recipe-follower. Which is the other main thing that Julia Child was trying to teach.

Feel free to ignore most of the hype around the Mastering books if you must, but do yourself a favor and make the cauliflower au gratin.

 

[kb0000]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]C[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]ooks Illustrated method of roasting / baking chicken using the broiler does a perfect job in about 30 minutes with one turn. [/FONT]​

 

[JonasStax]

Mastering the Art of French Cooking is an excellent historical reference cookbook.

Genetic manipulation of heritage ingredients probably started in the 1950's due to the mass post WW2 migration population explosion and the need to transport food long distances without spoiling.

Many of the ingredients listed in the book are heritage ingredients, where the majority of today's ingredients are hybrid breeds suitable for refrigeration. Unfortunately in the genetic breeding process, many hybrid breeds lack taste and require adding condiments, otherwise the end result will vary from excellent to very bland. Also unfortunate, the majority of heritage ingredients cannot be refrigerated and need cooking on the day the produce was picked.

Wheat is a generic name given to a collection of grass seeds. Depending on the availability of regional ingredients, baking recipes will produce a result from excellent to catastrophic failure.

Baking is chemistry. The best book I found for explaining baking is - Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman. http://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/dp/1416571728

The global recipe database contains six million recipes.

Over the past ten years, I downloaded and collated 150,000 recipes, from various recipe manager collections.

I started with Living Cookbook 2011. When it starting crashing in Windows 7, I moved onto MasterCook 14, then 15.

I have the complete Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume One recipes with photos in MasterCook format.

The majority of baking recipes in my database are variations on a theme. The above book eliminates many of the baking recipes in circulation, because all a person needs to understand is the ratios required for making perfect bread / pastry.

The same with meals. Many of the meals in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, over time, have been extensively tested, tweaked and simplified. Which recipe is the best is dependent on the individual taste preference. Disregard the critics, go for personal preference.