Assignment #4: Julia Child and Food

French theorist Roland Barthes writes, "When he buys an item of food, consumes it, or serves it, modern man does not manipulate a simple object in a purely transitive fashion; this item of food sums up and transmits a situation; it constitutes an information; it signifies."

Julia Child’s Experiences with Food:

In “My Life in France,” Julia Child writes about how France was where she began to “experience” food. Just the taste of a simple chicken in France changed Julia’s perception of food. She described the process of how “a waiter would baste it with the juices that dripped down into a pan filled with roasting potatoes and mushrooms” (48). Just the thought of the chicken basting in its natural juices had my mouth watering as a reader. After that enticing description of the process of how the chicken was cooked, Julia writes, “I realized that I had long ago forgotten what a real chicken tasted like!” (48). From the segment of her memoirs that I have read so far, I concluded that Julia Child became fascinated by how delicious food can actually be.

She discusses several of her experiences with the food she was accustomed to in America, and she compares it to the same foods in France. For example, the oysters she ate in Washington and Massachusetts were bland. But when she tried oysters in France, it was like eating an entirely different food. Both the flavor and the texture surprised her. From her discovery of the new tastes Julia was discovering in Paris, she explained that her tastes were growing bolder. For example, she never even considered eating snails before she tried various foods in Paris. After trying them in Paris, she learned, “Tender escargots bobbing in garlicky butter were one of my happiest discoveries!” (43). Whenever Julia described any type of food she was passionate about, she ended the sentence in an exclamation point to share her excitement with her audience.

What Food Signified for Julia Child:

I think that overall, food signified several things for Julia Child. It was a new adventure, a learning process, and a form of empowerment through her pure passion and enjoyment of food.

Similarities and Differences Between Julia Child and Ruth Reichl:

Unlike Julia Child, Ruth Reichl discussed her discoveries with food at a very early age. Julia did not have the same issues with discovering food out of bad experiences from a mother who served uncooked steak and moldy concoctions. Instead, Ruth learned about food as necessity in order to combat the lack of good food in her own home. Also when Ruth described the foods she tried in Montreal, Paris, and Tunisia, she discussed the tastes of foods she enjoyed. However, she did not compare them to the same foods she tried in America and the differences in taste. She simply wrote about how various foods were prepared and how they sang in her mouth. Also, Ruth showed the recipes and described the cooking process for most of the foods she discussed in her book where Julia merely described the taste.

The similarities between Julia and Ruth entail their pure passion and enjoyment of food. They both found food empowering in different ways, yet they both ended up becoming cooks. Both Julia and Ruth experienced food as a learning process, and they both described the texture, appearance, smell, and taste of food with such vigor that their readers’ mouths begin to water. For example, when Ruth discusses the raspberry tart from the cheesemaker in France, she states, “It was magnificent. The fruit was intoxicantingly fragrant and each berry released its juice only in my mouth, where it met the sweet, crumbly crust” (101). Through this example and several others in the text, I inferred that French cuisine was both Ruth Reichl’s and Julia Child’s favorite food.