Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child / Simone Beck / Louisette Bertholle - 1961

VERY GOOD+ — DUST JACKET: Minor wear & tear to top and bottom edges of spine, panels, folds and flaps. Minor chipping to top of spine, and outside corners, front panel. Small closed tears to top right, and bottom left corners of spine. Price clipped. BOARDS: Small dent to bottom edge, back. BOOK: Very good condition. Nice topstain. Please inspect photos closely for condition details. Any questions? Please don't hesitate to ask.

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Here on offer is an exceptionally nice copy of the groundbreaking cookbook that introduced practical French cooking to an American audience, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, written by Julia Child and co-authored by Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle. This copy is Volume 1 of the 1st trade edition, 2nd printing of the work published by Alfred Knopf in 1961. The dust jacket is protected from further wear by a Mylar sleeve.

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"Anyone can cook in the French manner anywhere, wrote Mesdames Beck, Bertholle, and Child, with the right instruction. And here is the book that, for forty years, has been teaching Americans how. Mastering the Art of French Cooking is for both seasoned cooks and beginners who love good food and long to reproduce at home the savory delights of the classic cuisine, from the historic Gallic masterpieces to the seemingly artless perfection of a dish of spring-green peas. This beautiful book, with more than one hundred instructive illustrations, is revolutionary in its approach because: It leads the cook infallibly from the buying and handling of raw ingredients, through each essential step of a recipe, to the final creation of a delicate confection. It breaks down the classic cuisine into a logical sequence of themes and variations rather than presenting an endless and diffuse catalogue of recipes; the focus is on key recipes that form the backbone of French cookery and lend themselves to an infinite number of elaborations bound to increase anyone s culinary repertoire."

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Simone "Simca" Beck (7 July 1904 – 20 December 1991) was a French cookbook writer and cooking teacher who, along with colleagues Julia Child and Louisette Bertholle, played a significant role in the introduction of French cooking technique and recipes into American kitchens. . . .

In 1949, after she had met Julia Child, she became inspired to write a French cookbook for Americans again. She, Child, and Bertholle together wrote Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which was published in 1961. Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. II (without Louisette Bertholle) followed in 1970, elaborating on several subjects (particularly baking and charcuterie) that the authors felt had received insufficient coverage in the first volume. . . .

Food and Friends: Recipes and Memories from Simca's Cuisine, her autobiography and last cookbook (with Suzy Patterson), was published in 1991, the year she died. . . .

Louisette Bertholle (26 October 1905 – 26 November 1999) was a French cooking teacher and writer, best known as one of the three authors (with Julia Child and Simone Beck) of the bestselling cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

The three women [Bertholle, Child and Beck] had initially signed a contract to publish Mastering the Art of French Cooking with Houghton Mifflin. The publishing company ultimately rejected the submitted manuscript, believing it was too much like an encyclopedia.[4][5] When it was finally published in 1961 by Alfred A. Knopf, the 734-page book was a best-seller and received critical acclaim. . . .

She [Bertholle] published additional books in France, and wrote a daily recipe for France-Soir until age 84.

Julia Carolyn Child (August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004) was an American cooking teacher, author, and television personality. She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was The French Chef, which premiered in 1963.

. . . In 1951, she graduated from the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and later studied privately with Max Bugnard and other master chefs. She joined the women's cooking club Le Cercle des Gourmettes, through which she met Simone Beck, who was writing a French cookbook for Americans with her friend Louisette Bertholle. Beck proposed that Child work with them to make the book appeal to Americans. In 1951, Child, Beck, and Bertholle began to teach cooking to American women in Child's Paris kitchen, calling their informal school L'école des trois gourmandes (The School of the Three Food Lovers). . . .

When it was finally published in 1961 by Alfred A. Knopf, the 726-page Mastering the Art of French Cooking was a best-seller and received critical acclaim that derived in part from the American interest in French culture in the early 1960s. . . . Following this success, Child wrote magazine articles and a regular column for The Boston Globe newspaper. She would go on to publish nearly twenty titles under her name and with others. Many, though not all, were related to her television shows. Her last book was the autobiographical My Life in France, published posthumously in 2006 and written with her grandnephew, Alex Prud'homme. The book recounts Child's life with her husband, Paul Cushing Child, in postwar France. . . .

The above text was taken from, respectively, Knopf publishers (via Google Books) and Wikipedia.