A Julia-worthy feast
Before “Iron Chef,” before Rachael Ray, before Emeril Lagasse, there was Julia Child. A 6-foot-2 culinary force of nature, Child used her passion for food, her wit, and her down-to-earth charm to demystify French cuisine for the American masses. Both “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” which she co-wrote, and her TV series, “The French Chef,” were groundbreaking. Child, who died in 2004, would have celebrated her 100th birthday on Aug. 15. Her memory lives on — vividly — at Harvard. Child’s path from ad executive to one of the world’s most famous chefs is captured in the correspondence, documents, books, photos, audio, and videotapes that make up the bulk of the Julia Child Papers at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study’s Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Her papers began to arrive at Radcliffe in 1976 in part because of her intense correspondence with Avis DeVoto, wife...