Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

by Bob Spitz

  Too bad some of that “great surge of creativity” hadn’t rubbed off on new construction. The only housing available to Julia and Paul was, well, jerry-built—bland pre-fab apartments, “very much like a Statler hotel,” as Julia described them. You couldn’t tell one from the next, aside from the wood finishes inside: either blond or mahogany. No charm or character whatsoever on the premises. Otherwise everything operated with German efficiency (Julia called it “rigidity”). They chose a flat, Apartment 5, on Steubenring, from which they could just about make out the Rhine, if they stood on their tiptoes and squinted. It was one of the blond models, brand-spanking new: new heating, new plumbing, new-apartment smell throughout. Only the kitchen drew Julia’s disfavor. “Not much room to cook much here,” she complained. And the stove was electric—a word Julia uttered in the same way she said Republican.

  By mid-1954, she was sufficiently comfortable with her new surroundings to resume work on the book, which was now being called French Cooking for the American Kitchen. With chapters on fish and eggs just about wrapped up in France, it was time to launch the next sections: Julia would focus on poultry, Simca on meats. For Julia, that meant researching and testing “some of the most glorious dishes of French cuisine.” There were literally hundreds of chicken recipes that would appeal to her readers. The old classics rolled off her tongue with assembly-line precision: chicken with tarragon, suprêmes de volaille (sautéed breasts in butter), milanaise (breaded breasts with Parmesan), coq au vin, fricassée, à la diabolique (deviled chicken, lightly breaded with mustard and cayenne), chasseur (with shallots, tomato, and cognac), Marengo (oil, tomato, and garlic), poule au pot (in the pot), portugaise, Kiev … You could seemingly cook a new chicken dish every day for several years. Where would it end?

  She knew where it would begin. Roast chicken, especially, was the litmus test for any French chef worth her weight in schmaltz. Julia adored roast chicken, poulet rôti; it would stand as her favorite dish for the rest of her life. As far as she cared, there was nothing like “a juicy, brown, buttery, crisp-skinned, heavenly bird” done to perfection in the oven. She had learned the technique at Le Cordon Bleu, where the chicken was massaged lavishly with butter, then turned and basted continuously until it was done. But those were French chickens, mostly from Bresse, the capital of chickendom, where birds were bought live, then killed and plucked on the spot. Their succulence and flavor were exquisite, incomparable. The German chickens were store-bought and stringy and “didn’t taste as good as their French cousins.” Still, they were fresh, neither packaged, iced, nor shipped long distances, as in the States. They would do as adequate stand-ins for her recipe tests.

  Julia experimented with roasting whole chickens for several weeks in November 1954, using different-size birds to gauge the best flavor. Her favorites were the roasters, weighing in at around three to three and a half pounds, with pale yellow skin that was young and supple. Not technically experienced with all things poultry, she had no way of knowing what type of chicken roasted best, so she conducted a series of tests with the entire range of birds: squabs, broilers, fryers, capons, old hens, and roosters, first learning to evaluate the characteristics of each, then determining their effectiveness as a mouthwatering roast. This, of course, took an enormous amount of time. Hour upon hour was devoted to cooking, analyzing, tasting, recalibrating, cooking again and again and again and again. She followed closely the classic recipes from such diverse authorities as Madame Saint-Ange and Larousse gastronomique, as well as younger phenoms like Dione Lucas, Louis Diat, and James Beard, whose books she imported through friends in the States. “There is no doubt,” says Jacques Pépin, “that Julia intended to be the final word on the subject. She was relentless, just unstoppable, when it came to writing this kind of master recipe. At the time, no one had really done it so thoroughly, taking modern methods into consideration.”

  How could American cooks best roast a chicken at home? She kept trying to answer that question during each phase of her research. What type of chicken would one encounter at a supermarket? How could a consumer detect freezer burn or insipidness? Would it take a longer or shorter time to cook in an electric oven? Her early notes were full of such concerns. In the margins, she scrawled issues that were still on her mind. “How to defreeze—ice-box best?” “What should a good chicken taste like?”

  She was relentless, just unstoppable.

  Her curiosity was unquenchable—and not subject to compromise. If the butcher at Krämer’s, in Bad Godesberg, couldn’t answer a basic question, Julia launched an inquiry that knew no bounds. Any number of books were consulted at the local university, letters were dashed off to government agencies and food experts at Gourmet or Woman’s Day. She took nothing for granted. “We must always remember that we are writing for an audience that knows nothing about French cooking,” she would say. “Nothing goes in [the book] that isn’t verified, beyond a doubt.” Inflexible though that rule was, she never wavered, never cut corners—says one of her assistants: “She was anal when it came to researching. You could put money on anything in one of her recipes”—and she insisted that Simca and Louisette uphold the same standard. “Thank heaven we both agree on the effort to reach perfection,” she wrote Simca.

  In a letter to Louisette, however, she avoided making the same compliment.

  Julia had always been so diligent in writing similar types of letters to both of her colleagues so as not to demonstrate any favoritism or cause a rift. From the beginning, they’d functioned like the Three Musketeers: “All for one and one for all!” But such codes of honor came with obligations. Louisette, as far as Julia was concerned, wasn’t living up to them. She and Simca worked like slaves, putting in forty-hour weeks at a minimum on the cookbook; Louisette contributed a mere six hours, at best. The project, according to Julia, had “gotten beyond her anyway.” She had “produced just about nothing except a long chapter on game, mostly copied directly out of a book.” Sure, sure, there were complications in Louisette’s personal life—a brute of a husband, two kids, trouble up the wazoo. She’d sung the same old song since they’d begun work on the project and they had made every effort to accommodate her. But when push came to shove, she was “not a good enough cook to present herself as an equal author,” a fact, Julia said, that “stuck in my craw.” It hardly seemed fair, and Julia said as much to Simca during a visit to France in early November 1954. She laid out her whole argument for redefining their roles, everything from individual responsibilities to credit and compensation.

  In fact, Julia had drafted a letter to Louisette that she pulled out of her purse. It was a brilliant piece of writing, each word carefully weighed and calculated for its effect, each sentiment crafted for its ultimate aim—and diplomatic to a fault. She laid it on thick, praising Louisette up and down, her unique talents and dedication, her generous contribution, her charming personality. Louisette, she said, had such “nice little peripheral ideas.” Nice little peripheral ideas! But—and here Julia began loading both barrels—“the major responsibility for the book rests on Simca and me,” who, for all intents and purposes were the “Co-Authors,” while Louisette was, let’s face it, a “Consultant,” nothing more. The credit on the book should read “by Simone Beck and Julia Child with Louisette Bertholle.” Then she took aim and fired: the royalties needed to be readjusted for a “fair split”: 45 percent each for Julia and Simca, and 10 percent for Louisette. These percentages more accurately reflected their collaboration.

  Simca agreed with Julia—but soon began backpedaling. Louisette was her friend, she argued, they’d hatched the book together, taught classes shoulder-to-shoulder, that husband was a nightmare … Arrête! Terminé! Julia didn’t want to hear it; she put her foot down. Hard. “We must be cold-blooded,” she insisted. “I shall love her more once we get this settled.”

  But love and business do not easily mix. After having discussed the situation with Louisette in person and having sent the follow‑up letter, Julia heard nothing from
her itinerant colleague. Several weeks passed and still not a word. “This little business with Louisette is turning out to be something of a problem,” she wrote Avis DeVoto in December 1954. Now Julia was good and pissed off. It was one thing for Louisette to disagree with the terms as proposed, another thing to ignore them entirely. Without delay, she dashed off another letter demanding that Louisette “come across with her opinions.” It seemed foolish, Julia wrote, not to have sorted this out earlier. But she “also waved the big stick,” suggesting that if an amicable arrangement couldn’t be achieved, perhaps they were better off canceling the contract with Houghton Mifflin.

  Over her dead body, of course. But the threat might extract an appropriate response.

  In the meantime, Julia waded deeper into chicken, selecting recipes whose ingredients were accessible to American cooks but still a traditional French preparation. Simca’s poulet rôti à la normande was a no-brainer. A roast chicken stuffed with sautéed liver, shallots, and cream cheese, and basted with an emulsion of thick, rich cream—talk about decadence. It was a dish that staggered, literally, friends and company, and she made it often that winter in Plittersdorf, for an ever-rotating ensemble of dinner guests. Occasionally, she tweaked the sauce with port and mushrooms, which threw the dish a musky curve. Or roasted the chicken in a covered casserole on a bed of sliced onions and carrots so that “the buttery, aromatic steam” created a sauna-like effect, tenderizing the bird beyond the limits of decency.

  To Julia, every chicken inspired another recipe. She ran through thirty or forty different dishes in three months, amassing notes, a sheaf of notes thick as a book, on each one. Sometimes they were “fabulous,” as she wrote in the margin of poulet farci au gros sel. Occasionally, “a complete disaster” ensued—“don’t attempt,” she advised. Avis followed her recipe for poulet rôti à la normande, using a gizmo called a roto-broiler, and wound up with pudding. “I made that chicken liver and cream cheese stuffing,” she reported. “But after about an hour-and-a-quarter noticed stuffing beginning to ooze out, and in another fifteen minutes it was all out, the rear walls of the vent had collapsed and the damn thing was falling apart.”

  You win some, you lose some. Back to the drawing board. But Julia was neither discouraged nor distressed. Her response to fiasco might be a growl: a growl followed by a choice imprecation. She’d fix that chicken! She’d ram an onion up a cavity where the sun don’t shine. Then it was on to the next dish, maybe poulet d’Honfleur, with cider cream and apples, or poulet bonne femme, with bacon, onions, and potatoes. The winter of 1955 kicked off an all-out chicken extravaganza.

  With so much to cook, Julia was happy, even in godforsaken Plittersdorf, where there was no one to lean on and keep her entertained. “So many US army are depressing,” she grumbled. “But I got quite a bit of working and cooking in, so it was not wasted!”

  Paul was hardly around; lately he wasn’t the best of company, up to his eyeballs in work as the USIA’s exhibits officer for all of Germany. The job consumed him. This wasn’t the ragtag operation he’d encountered in France. His budget was more than a hundred times larger, almost $10 million, and eminently more complicated. “The Information Operation is colossal here,” Julia gasped. There was so much ground to cover. In addition to the main office in Plittersdorf, there were twenty-two centers called Amerika Hauses spread across the country, each one churning out cultural propaganda, with libraries, movies, lectures, bookmobiles, press sections, and student exchanges. Bonn, Nuremberg, Dortmund, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne … Paul set out to another city each weekend, determined to visit one a month until he had covered all the houses—an impressive goal, what with his duty to provide constant programming for each.

  He was working at an intensity that was stunning for its output. So on April 7, 1955, when he was ordered back to Washington on the next plane, Julia was elated. “I was sure he was going to be made head of the department,” she said. At long last! After all the layers of bureaucracy—and the bullshit—he’d endured, he was finally going to receive the recognition he deserved.

  Julia could hardly contain herself. This would give Paul some sorely needed self-esteem, something to reassure him that a life in foreign service was not all in vain. “He is not the kind of man who ever pushes himself, and he is not ‘ambitious,’ ” she acknowledged. How sweet it would be to tell her father about Paul’s promotion. This would show that old blackguard what her husband was made of. Maybe he’d finally shut up about what a good-for-nothing Paul was.

  This called for a treat of some sort while Paul was away. Julia didn’t hesitate: she’d run up to Paris for a little one-on-one with Simca. What better way to celebrate than cooking with her friend? But on April 9, in the midst of her packing, a telegram arrived. situation confused, it read, in Paul’s cryptic fashion. Somehow, no one in Washington could tell him why he was there. Even the director of Berlin’s Amerika Haus, whom he bumped into at the State Department, had no idea. “He thinks it must be something special and secretive,” Paul wrote Julia, “otherwise ‘they’ would certainly have told him. Ah me—what a muck-up.”

  Indeed. Paul got ping-ponged from one office to the next, from administrator to administrator, without anyone “so much as saying boo.” “For God’s sake,” he wondered, “can’t anybody in this outfit clarify the mystery? Who sent for me? Why am I here?” Old friends at State were suddenly not available or in a meeting or had just ducked out and couldn’t be reached. A high-placed official, to whom he turned to for advice, said “there was a definite instruction to him to mind his own business.” Another official “assumed I was a CIA agent all the time and that my job as exhibits officer was merely a cover—and that I was being hauled back on a secret mission.”

  In the meantime, Paul checked into the Gralyn Hotel, a fusty turn-of-the-century Georgian Revival on N Street, and tried to acclimate himself to being back home. It felt so strange, so alien after so many years abroad. “The city looks dirty,” he wrote to Julia that first night in Washington. “Billboards stick out, strangely foreign. Everybody looks so American, it’s funny. Lots of Negroes.”

  And lots of paranoia. Everyone in public service seemed to be looking over his shoulder, afraid to go on the record, afraid of his own shadow. McCarthy! Julia seethed—what a scourge on the landscape. How she hated that man! Hated his tactics. She put him in the same category as Madame Brassart. Ptooey! (Little did she know the hotel where Paul was staying was just three doors away from the senator’s house.) “I think it best for you not to plan to go to Paris until I know more about how long I’ll be here,” Paul advised her. “It may well be that you’d better come back.”

  Come back? That didn’t bode well. And right in the middle of her chicken research. Well, Washington would be a huge step up from Plittersdorf, she thought. And with Paul’s obvious promotion, it would be a lot more affordable. She started to fantasize about living in her own house again. With a gas range and an outdoor herb garden. And having a steak—“an honest-to-goodness American steak.”

  By April 13, however, all that had changed. Another telegram arrived that put a new spin on the daydreams. situation here like kafka story, Paul telegrammed. i believe i am to be put in same situation as leonard. Oh no, Julia thought, not Rennie Leonard. He was a friend who’d come under scrutiny of McCarthy’s Un-American Activities pitbulls. This was a security investigation! “Paul wasn’t being promoted,” she realized, “he was being investigated.” Good lord! This had to be “simply one of those government mix-ups.”

  Not a chance. Her worst fears were realized over the next few days. Letter after letter arrived, describing the nightmare scenario. “This is curiously fantastic, unreal, frightening, and preposterous,” Paul wrote. He racked his brain, trying to trace the origin of such a charge. “I have nothing to hide or be ashamed of. If I am backed into a corner by some false charge, I intend to fight my way out.”

  It was big talk, considering that Paul was a physical and emotional wreck. Sin
ce leaving Germany, he’d been on a steady diet of sleeping pills “to combat my nervous tension.” He couldn’t sleep. His heart pounded like a kettledrum.

  It didn’t get any better the next day, when he was led into the Office of Security for the USIA and worked over by two Special Agents from the FBI. They grilled him for hours, reading from a dossier they’d compiled on him “about four inches thick.” What did he know about Jane Foster, his old free-spirited OSS pal from Ceylon and China? they wanted to know. And how about Morris Llewellyn Cooke, whose name Paul had given as a reference ten or fifteen years earlier? Cooke had headed the War Labor Board under FDR and later was instrumental in bringing electricity to rural American provinces. He was a Good Guy, Paul assumed. So was Jane Foster. In fact, he and Julia had reconnected with her while living in Paris, where she was engaged in the art scene as a prominent painter. State had also investigated his brother Charlie, that notorious liberal. The whole thing was outrageous, “preposterous,” he chided them. But not half as preposterous as their next line of questioning.

  He sat there, stone-faced, as they hedged, fidgeted, fingering his file. They were embarrassed, they said, about what needed to be asked. In the dossier was a charge that he was a homosexual. “And how about it?” they wanted to know. Paul “burst out laughing.” These guys were chuckleheads, “amateurs.” It was clear they knew nothing about him. Still, when the joke wore off he grew angry, confrontational.

  “According to the Constitution, I have a right to be faced by my accuser,” he told them, “so who was he or she?” Put up or shut up.

  If they knew, they weren’t saying. Nor were they convinced that he was straight, despite his marriage to Julia. “Homosexuals often have wives and children,” they said, returning to the issue time and again. Legend has it they asked Paul to drop his pants, but there is nothing in his letters or diary that confirms this.