By Jennifer Sergent
Scripps Howard News Service
Julia Child's reaction to receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation's highest civilian honor for life achievement — was anticlimactic.
"I'd never heard of it before," said Child, 91, the master chef and scholar of French cooking whose 40 years of cookbooks and cooking shows brought Americans out of the culinary dark ages.
Child received the medal in July, 40 years after her first cooking show, "The French Chef," premiered on public television. And since that very first show, when she introduced viewers to "our dear little old friend, the chicken," she has been preaching "the French way," which means, above all, taking food seriously.
Child was the first Medal of Freedom recipient to be honored in the culinary field since President John Kennedy started giving them out in 1963. In that respect, the medal is perhaps a vindication of Child's life mission to get people to take food seriously.
"Yes," she said, considering that thought, "so that was fine."
Just as America was slow to enter the halls of great cooking, so it was in honoring its pioneer. France got to her three years ago in 2000 with its own highest award, the Legion of Honor.
Now that she has retired after nine cooking shows and 13 cookbooks, top national honors from two countries and countless other industry awards and accolades, Child is in a good position to comment on the state of American cuisine.
"I think we're taking food much more seriously — and enjoying it," she said.
But it's not enough to create a climate that breeds great chefs and great cooking, she explained. The United States still doesn't have an "audience" for the craft like France does.
Walk into any bistro in France, she said, and you'll see French patrons truly study their menus — discuss the offerings, ask the waiter questions, and discuss them some more.
"It takes some time to order," she said.
"Here, they just order it and — slap, slap — there it is," she said. "People here in general are not as critical. An art is only as great as its audience."
Child created a much wider audience than existed in 1961, when she became a household name with her seminal book, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."
That eventually spawned her first public television show in 1963, "The French Chef."
At the time, the Ritz Hotel served beans and franks as its Friday special, "French Chef" producer Russell Morash said.
Furthermore, he added, "wine was exotic. We never had garlic, and when we did, we didn't like the taste of it. Leeks weren't available."
And here comes Julia Child, coming on air to make such things as an herb omelet and chicken breasts in a creamy wine sauce.
Morash compared Child's innate sense of taste to the keen vision of baseball star Ted Williams or Air Force fighter pilot Chuck Yeager.
"There's a certain natural ability this woman has to make these subtle changes that affects the taste," he said. "She is, after all, a great scholar of what she does. She's not a faker. She knows this stuff."
So, going back to Child's mantra: How, exactly, are we to take food more "seriously"?
There's a pause at the other end of the phone line, as if the answer should be obvious. But to indulge those of us not in the know, she elaborates: "It should be a symphony of taste, and everything in the meal should relate to itself."
Food is much more than "just eating to survive," she added. And cooking in "the French way" doesn't have so much to do with exotic ingredients as it does with "the love of food, and taking it seriously, and spending time over it. I think that's all it is."
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