Review: Julia Child’s The French Chef, by Dana Polan

Abstract

Book Review| February 01 2014 Review: Julia Child’s The French Chef, by Dana Polan Julia Child’s The French ChefDana Polan: Duke University Press, 2011 295 pp. including index. $23.95 (cloth) Malena Watrous Malena Watrous Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Gastronomica (2014) 14 (1): 83–84. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2014.14.1.83 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Malena Watrous; Review: Julia Child’s The French Chef, by Dana Polan. Gastronomica 1 February 2014; 14 (1): 83–84. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2014.14.1.83 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentGastronomica Search Julia Child earned her status as an American icon only after she burst onto the small screen in 1963 with her cooking show, “The French Chef.” Although it aired two years after the publication of her hit book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, no biographical detail or specific personality emerges from the cookbook, as Dana Polan astutely points out in his meticulously researched and entertaining book, Julia Child’s The French Chef, which analyzes the rise of Child’s popular cooking program and TV persona and her lasting influence upon the genre of the TV cooking show as we know it today. Child had a palpable passion for her subject—to make French cooking make sense—which meant that she wanted to import and translate the secrets of French gastronomy for the American housewife, or man. Polan notes that Child did not cater to a particular or gendered audience, and in... You do not currently have access to this content.