Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol.1

Julia Child was born in Pasadena, California. She was graduated from Smith College and worked for the OSS during World War II in Ceylon and China, where she met Paul Child. After they married they lived in Paris, where she studied at the Cordon Bleu and taught cooking with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, with whom she wrote the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961). In 1963, Boston's WGBH launched The French Chef television series, which made her a national celebrity, earning her the Peabody Award in 1965 and an Emmy in 1966. Several public television shows and numerous cookbooks followed. She died in 2004.

Simone Beck spent her girlhood in Normandy, and started cooking early in life. Originally a student of bookbinding, her interest in cooking crystallized under the tutelage of private chefs and of Henri Pellaprat at the Cordon Bleu. She lived most of her life in Paris and Provence but became well known in America through Mastering the Art of French Cooking and two books published under her own name.