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So uninhibited are her on-camera demonstrations that some viewers suspect that the more hilarious moments may stem from a preshow nip or two. But such is not the case. Although she is a staunch advocate of using wine in cooking, she never imbibes on the set. In fact, the wine that is shown on the table at the end of her show is, for economy reasons, a mixture of water and Gravy Master; Julia herself once kidded the rumor by pretending to take a sip of the mixture, announcing, "I am now going to enjoy a delicious glass of estate-bottled Gravee Mastere."
For all her lighter moments, Julia takes TV seriously, put in as many as 13 hours of work on taping day. Discipline for the cook, she believes, is second only to cleanliness. "French cooking is easy if you get good working habits and stick to them," she insists. And just as she carefully lined up her equipment before each show, so, in her book, she lines up the ingredients for each recipe on the left, the directions on the right.
Both the book and the show are loaded with tips. She recommends carbon steel knives rather than stainless because they are easier to keep sharp, heavy cast-iron or copper pots and pans because they spread heat evenly and won't tip over. The food shopper can be sure that fish is fresh, she advises, if the eyes are clear, the gills bright red and the flesh firm. The keys to successful sauteing are, first, patting dry the food, then hot fat and an uncrowded pan. A souffle has a much better chance of rising if it is put on the middle rack of an oven preheated to 400°, which is then immediately reduced to 374°.
Biscuits & Rabbit. The irony is that the mistress of all this expertise. could barely boil water when, at the age of 34, she married New Jersey-born Paul Child, ten years her senior. The two had met during World War II while she was serving as a chief filing clerk in the OSS in Ceylon and China and he was in charge of organizing the war room for General Wedemeyer and Lord Mountbatten. As Julia quickly found out, she had married a gourmet, a man who cared passionately about food, and had been brought up by a mother who once spent six months searching for just the right coffee bean, ended up by roasting her own combination of three.
By any test, Julia's cooking was a bust. As a girl she was a tomboy in a well-to-do Pasadena, Calif., family of six-footers (both her sister and brother, like Julia, top 6 ft., making their mother modest in her boast: "I have produced 18 feet of children"). Julia was content to eat what the family cook served, learned her mothers complete cooking repertory: baking-powder biscuits and Welsh rabbit, and little else. The one time she tried to cook pancakes for breakfast, she recalls, "it took about an hour. It was a real mess."