Much akin to Joy Of Cooking, Mastering The Art is a timeless cookbook that is more about technique and inspiration than pretty pictures you’ll never cook and crazy combinations that are sensational and nothing more.
It is on my list of the first five cookbooks a serious cook should own.
Do you own it?
This is a great resource I have had for many years.
It has so much information.
I can’t wait to see the movie.
I loved the book. Irreverent and uplifting all at once.
Tom beat me to it. I bought the two volume set many many years ago and read them. It’s generally the way I used cookbooks anyway - to get ideas, not to get measurements. Anyhow, it was some of the most overly complicated stuff I’d ever seen. Joy of Cooking was much easier to read and digest. I don’t think I ever made a single recipe from Julia’s books - they were just too overwrought. I did however, look at them from time to time over the years so they’ve been ongoing references in a sense.
I’m going to fall into the contrarian camp here. I don’t think she over-complicated things, but she did go into great detail - often times too much detail for someone who already knows how to cook at a relatively advanced level. Having said that, aside from the basics I learned from my mother, I learned almost everything I know about technique from Julia in my twenties unless the technique involved a fire or Italian cuisine (especially pasta and risotto), and I learned Italian from Marcella Hazan - another author whose classics contain no pictures and considerable detail about technique.
To this day I find myself adapting other recipes to what I learned from Julia, retaining the ingredients but either changing or discarding the technique and/or the order of battle.
If you think Julia Child is complicated, try some recipes by Thomas Keller.
I really appreciate the effort that went into these cookbooks. In the case of Keller, it might take you 4 days of complicated effort to produce the final product. But you can count on it being delicious.
Julia Child’s recipes, in comparison, are rather easy and give a large clear window on what was happening in France in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Of course everything changed soon thereafter, “cuisine minceur” etc etc. But a snapshot of France in that time frame, and recipes that are pretty uniformly amazingly delicious – what’s to complain about?
I agree, Frank, but beyond the climate of the time, how many ways are there to properly make such basics as mayonnaise, vinaigrette, hollandaise, bechamel and veloute? ONE EACH! Sure, Julia goes into great detail about subjects like this, but I still don’t understand the complaints that her recipes are overdone. Hell, they go back to Escoffier.
If you think Julia Child is complicated, try some recipes by Thomas Keller.
Or Charlie Trotter Sir…
I have Mastering The Art open in front of me now and as someone who has had to instruct newbs in these types of skills, I think the validity of the thorough text is very apparent. We used to speak of writing Idiot Proof recipes. Not to insult anyone, but to make sure that language that was used was understandable by everyone. Overly thorough, to be sure, but put it into context. This text was written in 1961. What did American housewives know about cooking from fresh in 1961?
A good knife from a bad knife?
Wine pairings and storing information?
It’s all in here, and it’s all 48 years old like me.
Way ahead of her time.
Bob, I totally agree, Marcella shows exactly how to do it. And Keller’s recipes are complicated because the food is complicated. They are expressed with brilliant clarity, though. The recipes in ‘Mastering The Art’ are pretty good but basics are taught as a series of (too many)processes rather than by getting hold of the whys, which is the key in cooking.
Saw the movie last night.
Even better than I thought it might be.
A must for any foodie.
Streep continues to demonstrate why she is at the very top for American actresses.
Half way through, I turned to wife and said, I forgot I was watching Meryl Streep and not Julia.
We saw it last night as well.
Thoroughly enjoyed it and kudos to Amy Adams (Julie Powell) as well. She had the tougher role I think by virtue of the fact that no one knew who her character was until now.
I may have to try to cook some of these recipes just for the exercise.
Frank - interesting point about the books being a window on what was French cooking at that time. It’s true with many cookbooks and for me that’s one of the things that makes them interesting to read or peruse - each is so much of a time and place.
Bob- it’s not that her recipes themselves were so complicated. Maybe that’s the wrong word.
It’s that her instructions were too overworked. They were broken down too far and into unnecessary detail. She could put the information on a page but instead took two or three pages, and spread the lists of ingredients out over those pages. It’s hard to use information when presented like that. Set out the ingredients and I can figure out the idea without much thinking about it.
Maybe the people for who she intended those books had no idea at all how to cook. If they were only capable of opening cans, then her goal was understandable and laudable. And she did change her style in later books.