Setting the Table for Julia Child Strauss, David Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Strauss, David. Setting the Table for Julia Child: Gourmet Dining in America, 1934–1961. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.60324. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/60324 [ Access provided at 26 Sep 2021 18:01 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Setting the Table for Julia Child Setting the Table for Julia Child Gourmet Dining in America, 1934– 1961 DAVID STRAUSS The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2011 Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Mary land 21218- 4363 www .press .jhu .edu Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Strauss, David, 1937– Setting the table for Julia Child : gourmet dining in America, 1934– 1961 / David Strauss. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 8018- 9773- 3 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN- 10: 0- 8018- 9773- 4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Dinners and dining— United States— History—20th century. 2. Gourmets— United States— History—20th century. 3. Food habits— United States— History—20th century. 4. Food— Social aspects— United States— History—20th century. 5. Gourmet. 6. Cookery, American— History—20th century. 7. United States— Social life and customs— 1918– 1945. 8. United States— Social life and customs—1945– 1970. I. Title. GT2853.U5S77 2011 394.1'20973—dc22 2010015272 A cata log record for this book is available from the British Library. Frontispiece: Carving a suckling pig, La Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin dinner, Chateau Clos de Vougeot, France, from La Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin (Paris: Éditions E.P.I.C., 1950), p. 81. La Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410- 516- 6936 or [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post- consumer waste, whenever possible. All of our book papers are acid- free, and our jackets and covers are printed on paper with recycled content. To my gourmet heirs: Ben and Monique, Jesse, Annie and Guillermo, Leah and Matt Bon Appetit! This page intentionally left blank contents A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s i x Note to the Reader xiii Introduction 1 1 Food Fights in Twentieth- Century America: The Good Life versus the Healthy Life 11 2 Building a Foundation for Gourmet Dining in America 43 3 Origins, Rituals, and Menus of Gourmet Dining Societies, 1934– 1961 70 4 Selectivity and Publicity in the Gourmet Dining Movement 101 5 Beating the Nazis with Truffl es and Tripe: The Early Years of Gourmet: The Magazine of Good Living 134 6 Gourmet’s Gastronomic Tours: Samuel Chamberlain and His Bouquets 163 7 From Readers to Cooks? The Infl uence of Gourmet/Gourmet Recipes 189 8 Julia and Simca: A Franco- American Culinary Alliance 221 viii Contents Conclusion 248 Notes 259 Essay on Sources 305 Index 315 Color illustrations follow page 128 a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s early half a century ago, well before food studies became a respectable aca- Ndemic discipline, Richard Hofstadter recounted his culinary adventures at Le Pavillon in New York to perplexed students in his Columbia University gradu- ate history seminar. As it turned out, this was a pleasant, but not a frivolous, departure from the assigned topic. Asserting that there was no such thing as an American cuisine, Hofstadter sparked a spontaneous debate over whether hot dogs, hamburgers, and steaks met the criteria for such a culinary regime. That debate, which has been percolating in my brain and whetting my appetite ever since, planted the seed from which this book has grown. It addresses, as our seminar did, the contrast between the relatively unstable foodways of the United States and the more highly articulated French dining regime. Further, it calls to mind the many ways, small and large, that Richard Hofstadter’s innovative spirit continues to shape the writing of history. While no one can re create the taste of past gourmet dinners, observers’ ac- counts, menus, recipes, and cata logues of specialty food and wine stores, as well as the papers of leading food writers, publishers, and activists in gourmet societ- ies, provide useful information about those occasions. The following institutions have generously opened their collections of such documents to me: Les Amis d’Escoffi er (Boston, Chicago, and New York chapters); the Boston Globe Library; Bowling Green State University; the Chicago History Museum; La Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin (New Orleans, New York, and Washington, D.C., chap- ters); the Enoch Pratt Free Library; Houghton Library; the International Wine and Food Society (Boston, Chicago, London, and New York chapters); Iowa State University; the John Hartman Center at Duke University; Kalamazoo College; the Kalamazoo Public Library; the Michigan State University Library; the Mis- souri Historical Society; Oklahoma State University Library; Prince ton Univer- sity Library; the Schlesinger Library; the Smith College Library; the Society of x Acknowledgments Medical Friends of Wine; the Stanford University Library; the Straus Historical Society; the University of California Libraries at Berkeley, Davis, and Los Ange- les; the University of Pennsylvania Library; the University of Texas Library; West- ern Michigan University Archives; and the Williams Research Center, New Orleans. Much of the material for writing a history of gourmet dining is in the hands and minds of individuals who have been active in gourmet dining societies, in writing about food and wine, or in maintaining collections of useful materials. I am grateful to the following for providing recollections and documents on diff er- ent aspects of the topic: Victor Atkins, Edwin James Blair, Cameron Brown, Sha- ron Carlson, Narcisse Chamberlain, Jacques Chevignard, Louis- Marc Chevignard, Christine Crawford- Oppenheimer, John Danza, Lynn Eaton, Rebecca Gray, James Hammond, Louis Hatchett, William Hoff mann, Sarah Hutcheon, Marilyn Mel- lowes, Martin Olliff , Joan Reardon, Ruth Slechta, Dan Strehl, Charles Turgeon, Gail Unzelman, Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, and Julius Wile. (For telephone inter- views, see the “Essay on Sources.”) Special thanks go to Lee Langan, archivist of the San Francisco Wine and Food Society, who initially shared with me his digital record of the Society’s menus and later scanned selected items from the collection to be reproduced in the color gallery. At Kalamazoo College, Kathryn Lightcap scanned a number of images for the manuscript; Marigene Arnold, Gail Griffi n, Franklin Presler, and Bob Stauff er have shared their thoughts in ongoing conversations about the changing Ameri- can dietary regime, while David Barclay and Charlene Boyer- Lewis have made helpful suggestions for revising the manuscript. Special thanks to Paul Smithson, who sharpened my grasp of fi ne printing, and to Billie Fischer for interpreting Italian Renaissance motifs. For his refl ections on the conceptual issues underly- ing the treatment of gourmet dining, I am grateful to Bob Stauff er. Scholars in the burgeoning fi eld of food history have also read one or more chapters of the manuscript. Thanks to Amy Bentley, Jan Langone, Harvey Lev- enstein, Anne Mendelson, Jessamyn Neuhaus, Thomas Pinney, Laura Shapiro, and Amy Trubek for their helpful advice. Christopher Endy’s critique of chapter 6 has helped me to understand the infl uence of Gourmet guidebooks on post– World War II tourism. At the Johns Hopkins University Press, thanks to Debby Bors, Bob Brugger, Jeremy Horse fi eld, and Josh Tong, whose careful reading of the manuscript much improved it. Acknowledgments xi I have drawn inspiration from two conferences on food history that have refl ected on current and future directions for research in the fi eld: “Food and Drink in Consumer Societies” (Hagley Museum and Library, November 1999) and “Women, Men, and Food: Putting Gender on the Table” (Radcliff e Institute for Advanced Study, April 2007). It is a plea sure, as well, to acknowledge the Rad- cliff e Institute for Advanced Studies for awarding me a Schlesinger Library Re- search Support Grant. Two individuals have supported my project from the outset and have read every word of the manuscript in its entirety at least once. John Lankford has been unstint- ing in his support of my eff orts to chart new territory in the history of food, while insisting that the story be told in a clear and lively fashion. My wife, Dhera, has purged early drafts of egregious errors, assisted me in selecting the illustrations for the text, and supplied the title for the book. Equally important, she has provided a steady fl ow of gourmet cooking to fuel the project and inspire the imagination. This page intentionally left blank note to the reader Recipes and menus written in French or Italian, as well as other expressions in these languages, appear in italics. In cases where the name of a dish has been written in En glish and French, I have not altered the original version. This page intentionally left blank Setting the Table for Julia Child This page intentionally left blank Introduction magine for the moment a typical day’s food itinerary in the lives of Jane and IJohn Hale, both working for a law fi rm in a large American city in 2011. They rise to a light breakfast of orange juice followed by croissants, which they have purchased from a local bakery and warmed in their micro wave; while devouring the croissants, they sip Sumatra coff ee brewed from beans purchased at a nearby Starbucks and freshly ground.