Julia Child Quotes

38 Sourced Quotes

The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook.

Julia Child
I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. … Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed—eh bien, tant pis! Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile … then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile—and learn from her mistakes.

Julia Child
Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, well, so is the ballet.

Julia Child
Fake food — I mean those patented substances chemically flavored and mechanically bulked out to kill the appetite and deceive the gut — is unnatural, almost immoral, a bane to good eating and good cooking.

Julia Child
I admired the English immensely for all that they had endured, and they were certainly honorable, and stopped their cars for pedestrians, and called you sir and madam, and so on. But after a week there, I began to feel wild. It was those ruddy English faces, so held in by duty, the sense of what is done and what is not done, and always swigging tea and chirping, that made me want to scream like a hyena

Julia Child
One of the secrets, and pleasures, of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed.

Julia Child
Once you have mastered a technique, you barely have to look at a recipe again.

Julia Child
It's hard to imagine a civilization without onions; in one form or another their flavor blends into almost everything in the meal except the desert.

Julia Child
Just speak very loudly and quickly, and state your position with utter conviction, as the French do, and you'll have a marvelous time!

Julia Child
Nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should.

Julia Child
Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed — eh bien, tant pis! Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile, as my ersatz eggs Florentine surely were, then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile — and learn from her mistakes.

Julia Child
The waiters carried themselves with a quiet joy, as if their entire mission in life was to make their customers feel comfortable and well tended.

Julia Child
There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry — architecture being perhaps the least banal derivative of the latter.

Julia Child
The tomato hides its griefs. Internal damage is hard to spot.

Julia Child
Too much trouble,' 'Too expensive,' or 'Who will know the difference' are death knells for good food.... Cooking is not a particularly difficult art, and the more you cook and learn about cooking, the more sense it makes.

Julia Child
Many of the delicious soups you eat in French homes and little restaurants are made just this way, with a leek-and-potato base to which leftover vegetables or sauces and a few fresh items are added.

Julia Child
You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made,' [Chef Bugnard] said. 'Even after you eat it, it stays with you - always.

Julia Child
In France cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.

Julia Child
Cassoulet, that best of bean feasts, is everyday fare for a peasant but ambrosia for a gastronome, though its ideal consumer is a 300-pound blocking back who has been splitting firewood nonstop for the last twelve hours on a subzero day in Manitoba.

Julia Child
Food, like the people who eat it, can be stimulated by wine or spirits. And, as with people, it can also be spoiled.

Julia Child
Upon reflection, I decided I had three main weaknesses: I was confused (evidenced by a lack of facts, an inability to coordinate my thoughts, and an inability to verbalize my ideas); I had a lack of confidence, which cause me to back down from forcefully stated positions; and I was overly emotional at the expense of careful, 'scientific' though. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.

Julia Child
Just like becoming an expert in wine, you learn by drinking it, the best you can afford. You learn about great food by finding the best there is, whether simply or luxurious. The you savor it, analyze it, and discuss it with your companions, and you compare it with other experiences.

Julia Child
My, I get so depressed after a poor meal; that's why I can never stay in England for more than a week.

Julia Child
Certainly one of the important requirements for learning how to cook is that you also learn how to eat.

Julia Child
I always give my bird a generous butter massage before I put it in the oven. Why? Because I think the chicken likes it—and, more importantly, I like it.

Julia Child
Some children like to make castles out of their rice pudding, or faces with raisins for eyes. It is forbidden — so sternly that, when they grow up, they take a horrid revenge by dying meringues pale blue or baking birthday cakes in the form of horseshoes or lyres or whatnot.

Julia Child
This is a book for the servantless American cook who can be unconcerned on occasion with budgets, waistlines, time schedules, children's meals, the parent-chauffeur-den mother syndrome or anything else which might interfere with the enjoyment of producing something wonderful to eat.

Julia Child
Of course I made many boo-boos. At first this broke my heart, but then I came to understand that learning how to fix one's mistakes, or live with them, was an important part of becoming a cook.

Julia Child
The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a 'What the hell?' attitude.

Julia Child
We are so bemused by our own petard, that we are unable to look at things objectively.

Julia Child