{alltv} Julia Child always exquisite

When U.S. writer Bernard DeVoto (Mark Twain's America) wrote an article for a 1951 issue of Harper's magazine deploring the quality of American kitchen utensils, Julia Child, who had been living in Paris for almost four years, sent him a French carbon steel paring knife.

DeVoto's wife Avis, who handled his correspondence, acknowledged the gift.

Child acknowledged the acknowledgement, and a 40-year friendship was sparked, a bond based initially on correspondence but one which deepened into visits, shared journeys and professional collaboration.

As Always, Julia, is the immensely rewarding chronicle of two women who delighted in each other's personalities, whose interests were in almost perfect accord and whose "same wave-length" pursuits gave their friendship its savour.

Dear Mrs. Child and Dear Mrs. DeVoto soon became Dear Julia and Dearest Avis as the two compared notes on food, wine, kitchen gadgets, reading, travel and American politics.

The relationship flourished. "To think that we might easily have gone through life not knowing each other," DeVoto wrote, "missing all this flowing of love and ideas and warmth and sharing. We really share almost everything."

The correspondence begins when Child, living in Paris where her husband, Paul, was an official with the U.S. State Department's Information Service, was beginning to pursue what became a lifelong passion for French food, for the ingredients, ideas and menu variations which, she felt, made French cuisine superior to its rivals.

According to editor Joan Reardon, Child had experienced a "culinary epiphany" in France and had determined "with the fervour of a religious convert" to master French skills.

She enrolled at the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, met future colleagues Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle and, at their urging, joined Les Circle Gourmettes, an exclusive women's club dedicated to the art of high cuisine.

The three then organized their own cooking school, L'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes, which met twice weekly.

When Child and her two colleagues decided to collaborate on a French cookbook for the American market, DeVoto became their most enthusiastic supporter. She immediately saw the book's potential, Reardon points out, and "quickly became Julia's stateside adviser on ingredients, utensils and the preferences of American cooks, as well as a valuable sounding board for Julia's staunch liberalism, ambition and occasional insecurity."

DeVoto used her contacts with her husband's publisher, Houghton Mifflin, to drum up interest in Child's project and was able to shepherd the three would-be authors through disappointing and testing times. In 1961, Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published, through DeVoto's auspices and with great success, by Alfred Knopf. In the end, Houghton Mifflin had deemed the book too complex for the American kitchen.

The Child-DeVoto correspondence is chock-full of fascinating banter, mouth-watering food talk and mutual confidences.

Although it treats, mainly, of a shared interest in the preparation of food and the delight it affords, it deals, too, with the charged American political scene, with Child's rejection of her family's ultra right-wing Republicanism and with her enthusiastic support, with DeVoto, of the presidential candidacy of Adlai Stevenson.

The two indulge in anti-Joe McCarthy tirades while exchanging tips on veal with tarragon, omelettes and olive oil and on the art of basting a turkey with cream, rather than with pan juices. "People who like to eat," Child reminds DeVoto, "are always the best people."

As Always, Julia, is the story of a friendship taking flight. It would be more than two years before Child and DeVoto would first meet, but in between they entered, eagerly, into each other's lives. Child followed DeVoto's doings as publisher's scout, book reviewer, mother of two and busy hostess, while DeVoto delighted in Child's moves from Paris to Marseilles, to Bonn, Germany, then to Oslo, as her husband's career shifted.

Distance, Child once suggested to DeVoto, allowed their "cookerybookery" letter writing to be defined by candour.

No topic seemed out of bounds, as talk of calves liver, quennelles and beurre blanc turned to political outrage, sex, favourite books and, even, death, when DeVoto's husband died of a sudden heart attack in November, 1955.

As Child noted: "I suppose one reason we can write so easily to each other is that, for one, we have established the rhythm. Perhaps if we lived next door, we would have developed curtains and veils and various tender heels. Anyway, it is lovely to be perfectly at ease, and to be able to discuss anything at all; and may it ever remain so."