Julia Child Quotes

The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.

"Celebrity has its uses. I can always get a seat in any restaurant."

Source: Esquire Magazine, June 2000 original edition

Find something you're passionate about and stay tremendously interested in it.

Partridge was one of my favorite discoveries. During one early-morning exploration of Les Halles, Chef Bugnard stopped at a friend’s stall and, picking up a partridge, said, “Here you see a perdreau.” The generic name for partridge is perdrix, but a young roasting bird is a perdreau. He decided to demonstrate how to make the famous perdreau rôti sur canapé, a roast partridge on a crouton of its own chopped liver. Bending the tip end of the bird’s breastbone, he said, “Feel that. It bends a little at the end.” With some difficulty at first, because of the feathers, I felt the breastbone. It did indeed have about half an inch of flexibility at the tail end. The bird’s legs and feet were also subjected to Chef’s inspection: if there was a claw above the back of the heel, it was mature; youthful perdreaux have but a nubbin where the eventual claw will be, and their legs are not raddled by age. The feathers, too, tell something, since those of the young have a bit of white at the very tips. Picking up a mature partridge, a perdrix, he said, “When you feel a rigid bone from neck to tail, you have maturity.” A perdrix wants braising in cabbage, he said, and perdrix en chartreuse is the classic recipe.

"Julie's cookery is actually improving," Paul wrote Charlie [his twin]. "I didn't quite believe it would, just between us, but it really is. It's simpler, more classical.... I envy her this chance. It would be such fun to be doing it at the same time with her."

Fat gives things flavor.

You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made,” he said. “Even after you eat it, it stays with you — always.

Was it a sign of Creeping Decrepitude?

tender escargots bobbing in garlicky butter were one of my happiest discoveries!

"One thing that separates us Senior Citizens from the Juniors is learning how to suffer," Paul noted. "It's a skill, just like learning to write."

Always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need.

Until I discovered cooking, I was never really interested in anything.

Dorothy says she ducks invitations to dine with young married people because she can’t, at her age, take the casserole any more — she described one composed of pork chops and canned Bing cherries, after which she came home and was sick.

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.

One evening, we stopped at a charming Tudor inn, where we were served boiled chicken, with little feathers sticking out of the skin, partially covered with a typical English white sauce. Aha! At last I would try the infamous sauce that the French were so chauvinistic about. The sauce was composed of flour and water (not even chicken bouillon) and hardly any salt. It was truly horrible to eat, but a wonderful cultural experience.