Modern Living: A Franglais Challenge To Cordon Bleu

"You can't just learn French cooking from a book," advises Julia Child—author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In fact, insists the doyenne of haute cuisine in America, the best way to master the arcane art is to go to school and learn it. "It's like music. If you don't know scales and chords and fingerwork, you can't do much except slop around." A culinary Juilliard School, by Child's definition, "must be extremely well-run by someone who is absolutely devoted to it. And it must be in France, of course."

Hence—of course—La...