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The same could be said of Julia herself. For, though she has a diploma from France's Cordon Bleu, is a member of Paris' Le Cercle des Gourmettes, and with two friends, the co-authors of her book, once ran a cooking school for Americans in Paris, she approaches her subject with straightforward simplicity: "French cooking starts out from just perfectly direct principles. It's so important that there are reasons for doing things. It is a tradition with rules—perfectly simple ones. If you know them, then you can do any kind of cooking." To teach rules and take the mystery out of French cooking, and adapt it to the U.S. kitchen and supermarket, is Julia's aim and the key to her success.
Shallot of the Month. If 1966 is the year that everyone seems to be cooking in the kitchen with Julia, this is partially because Julia is just right for the times. The concern with good eating, which first became evident after World War II, has now swept across the nation. Cooking schools everywhere report themselves oversubscribed. Supermarkets have found that their gourmet counters are their handsomest profit earners, and are rapidly expanding them. "Sixty percent of the items in this store weren't here ten years ago," says the manager of Chicago's Stop 'n' Shop. De Falco's Bon Vivant supermarket in San Diego stocks more than 3,000 kinds of fancy foods, from kippered sturgeon and kangaroo tails to pickled rooster combs and 4-lb. tins of Caspian Sea caviar ($200).
A decade ago, the typical market offered half a dozen cheeses. "Today," says Ed Kiatta, manager of Larimer's in Washington, D.C., "if you don't have at least 50 assorted, high-powered imported cheeses, you're not in business." The same is true of herbs and spices. Once a store could make do with a dozen old dependables; today, supermarkets carry more than 100 items, with such old standbys as sage being displaced, as "too strong," by such postwar newcomers as fresh tarragon, fennel, thyme, dill and coriander. And for shallot fanciers there is now a Shallot-of-the-Month Club; for $9 they can receive a month's supply.
Let Julia Child so much as mention vanilla wafers, and the shelves are empty overnight. The kitchenware she brandishes with so much relish fares similarly. At Chicago's Cooks' Cupboard, Owner Robert George credits her show with the sudden spurt in sales of such things as fish poachers and French chef's knives.
Manhattan's La Cuisiniere has noticed a dramatic increase in sales of charlotte molds and copper beating bowls (at $18 to $27 each); the Bridge Co. now finds that its bestsellers are $10.95 cast-aluminum omelet pans used on Julia's show, followed closely by $9.95 paella pans and $50 butcher's blocks. And in Pittsburgh, when she beat egg whites with a wire whisk, her followers bought out every whisk in town.
Contretemps into Triumphs. What keeps her fans turning on her TV show is the same thing that sent their grandparents to the movie theaters to watch The Perils of Pauline: suspense. For from the moment that Julia appears on the screen, sleeves rolled above the elbow and blue denim apron about her waist, until her closing "Bon appetit," there is no telling what calamity may confront her.