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Orloff, but you can do something very good with a sow's ear." Putting theory into practice was something else.
A year was spent producing the chapter on sauces, partly, she says, "because we had to learn so much while we were doing it." Then Paul's assignments took the Childs away from Paris, first to Marseille, then to West Germany, then back to Washington, and finally to Norway. All the while Julia and "Simca," as she calls Simone Beck, corresponded furiously, including one epic discussion of cassoulet. The question at issue: Must the bean dish include preserved goose? Their conclusion: no.
By the time the manuscript was completed in 1958—seven years after they had started—it ran to 850 pages, and Houghton Mifflin, which had contracted for it, turned it down. Reluctantly, the three girls cut it to 684 pages—still too long for Houghton Mifflin, but not for Gourmet Alfred Knopf, who brought it out in 1961, and has been watching the sales soar ever since. . Three Pounds to Go. When Paul Child resigned the same year, he and Julia moved into the pleasant, intellectual community of Cambridge, Mass., buying the house once owned by famed Harvard Philosopher Josiah Royce. One of their first improvements was to redo the kitchen to make it a cooking laboratory for Julia. Designed by Paul, whose paintings, wood carvings and metal engravings decorate the rest of the house, it is a gourmet's palace, with everything from a restaurant range and double electric ovens to walls hung with pots, each hook marked by a silhouette so that no pot or pan is ever out of place.
Cooking dominates their life, with Julia endlessly perfecting recipes and Paul acting as the cookbook's official photographer, recording each step in Julia's preparation for sketches to illustrate future chapters. "The thing about food," says Julia, "is you're a much happier person if you eat well and treasure your meals." No purist, she thinks nothing of belting down a couple of stiff bourbons at home just before Paul serves a superb Grands Echezeaux from his 350-bottle wine cellar. She keeps tubs of Marlboros on the kitchen table, gaily dips into them for a smoke between courses. "I hate people who put on the dog, don't you?" she smiles guilelessly.
One thing the Childs do watch relentlessly. Overweight is the occupational disease of cooks, and as Julia, who has slimmed down to 159 lbs. and still has three more to go, insists, "Calories do count. Why, even an apple is 70 calories." To keep trim, she and Paul exercise every morning, breakfast on fruit and tea, lunch on cold meat and salad. Even at dinner, their one big meal of the day, they limit themselves to just one helping. "People who have to diet and who also like French food," says Julia, "just have to eat less."