Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Mastering the Art of French Cooking EJ. Levy Afew months ago, while browsing the tables ofa secondhand bookshop, I came across a pristine copy ofMastering the Art ofFrench Cooking for $7.49, and bought it. It was an odd encounter, like corning on an old photograph whüe rummaging through a box; its cardboard cover and impressive heft famiUar as chüdhood. Now it rests beside me on the table, its cover delicately patterned Uke wallpaper—white with miniature red fleurs-de-Us and tiny teal stars. The tide and authors' names modestly scripted in a rectangular frame no larger than a recipe card—a model offeminine self-effacement. I have no photograph ofmy mother cooking, but when I recall my childhood that is how I picture her, my mother, standing in the kitchen of our suburban ranch house, a blue and white terrycloth apron tied at her waist, her lovely head bent over a chorus ofpots and pans, and open Uke a hymnal on the counter beside her, a copy ofJulia Chüd's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. This unassuming book was my mother's constant companion throughout my childhood, and from the table laid with a blue cotton cloth, not yet set with flatware and plates and glasses of ice water, not yet laid with the bowls of steaming broccoU spears, boeufbourguignon, potatoes sautéed in butter and onion, I observed her as she sought in its pages an elusive balance between the bitter and sweet. My mother was not alone in her cuUnary predilection; her ardor was typical ofthe age. Eva Hoffman, in her elegant memoir Lost in Translation, describes a picnic taken while a graduate student at Harvard in the sixties: "We walk companionably through the woods, and then take out our wine bottles and bread and deUcious concoctions made out oftheJuUa Child cookbook, which is de rigeur these days for aU ofus bohemians, rebels, and revolutionaries." How could a cookbook inspire such passion? Why, in an era of social conflict, should so many concur on the virtue of one book? What, in short, was its appeal? 162 EJ. Levy163 My mother maintains that the popularity ofFrench cooking in the sixties was the result of two factors: post-war affluence and feminine frustration. It is true that in the wake ofWorldWar II, many Americans found themselves more affluent than ever before and more continental. Many men stationed in Europe during the war had had a taste of French culture and cuisine and, given the expanding post-war economy, many more would travel there as tourists to sample that culture synonymous with taste and style. At the same time, women who had been working outside the home during the war were being pressed back into the domestic sphere. Cooking, my mother contends, especiaUy elaborate French cooking, was not only a palpable sign of good taste and social ascension, it was, she says, quite simply one ofthe few things talented, inteUigent women—stuck at home—could do. StiU I wonder if the explanation lies less with history than with aesthetics . For the appeal of the cookbook is not unlike that of Renaissance art: it offers the same promise ofproportion, the same satisfying blend ofdisparate elements. Like painting, cooking is a refutation of entropy, an arrangement of multiple elements into a new and formal whole. Perhaps this accounts for its appeal in the sixties, a period when the country was coming apart at the seams. The cookbook speaks to our twin desires for order and for sustenance . Where else in modern life does one find such certitude, such clear and dependable rules? Where else does one meet with such economy and precision of detail? Boeuf bourguignon. Vichyssoise. Salade niçoise. BouiUabaisse. Bernaise. MouseUine au chocolat.Years before I could speU these foods, I learned their names from my mother's lips, their smeUs by heart. At the time, I took no notice of the gustatory schizophrenia that governed our meals: the extravagant French cuisine prepared on the nights my father dined with us; the SwansonTV dinners on those nights we ate alone, we three kids and my mother. Had I noticed these cuhnary cycles, I doubt that...