Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2 A Cookbook

The sequel to the classicMastering the Art of French Cooking Here, from Julia Child and Simone Beck, is the sequel to the cooking classic that has inspired a whole American generation to new standards of culinary taste and artistry. On the principle that "mastering any art is a continuing process," they continued, during the years since the publication of the now-celebrated Volume One, to search out and sample new recipes among the classic dishes and regional specialties of Francecooking, conferring, tasting, revising, perfecting. Out of their discoveries they have made, for Volume Two, a brilliant selection of precisely those recipes that will not only add to the repertory but will, above all, bring the reader to a yet higher level of mastering the art of French cooking. This second volume enables Americans, working with American ingredients, in American kitchens, to achieve those incomparable flavors and aromas that bring up a rush of memoriesof lunch at a country inn in Provence, of an evening at a great Paris restaurant, of the essential cooking of France. Among its many treasures: the first authentic, successful recipe ever devised for making real French breadthe long, crunchy, yeasty, golden loaf that is like no other bread in texture and flavorwith American all-purpose flour and in an American home oven; soups from the garden, chowders and bisques from the seaincluding great fish stews from Provence, Normandy, and Burgundy; meats from country kitchens to haute cuisine, in master recipes that demonstrate the special art of French meat cookery; chickens poached (thirteen ways) and sauced; vegetables alluringly combined and restored to a place of honor on the menu; a lavish array of desserts, from the deceptively simple to the absolutely splendid. But perhaps the most remarkable achievement of this volume is that it will make Americans actually more expert than their French contemporaries in two supreme areas of cookery: baking andcharcuterie. In France one can turn to the local bakery for fresh and expertly baked bread, or to neighborhoodcharcuterieforpatesandterrinesand sausages. Here, most of us have no choice but to create them for ourselves. And in this book, thanks to the ingenuity and untiring experimentation of Mesdames Child and Beck, we are given instructions so clear, so carefully tested, that now any American cook can make specialties that have hitherto been obtainable only from France's professional chefs and bakers. With the publication of Volume Two, one can select from a whole new range of dishes, from the French bread to a salted goose, from peasantragoutsto royal Napoleons. Each of the new master recipes is worked out, step by infallible step, with the detail, exactness, and clarity that are the soul ofMastering the Art of French Cooking. And the many drawingsfive times as many as in Volume Oneare demonstrations in themselves, making the already clear instructions doubly clear. More than a million American families now own Volume One. For them and, in fact, for all who would master the art of French cooking, Julia Child and Simone Beck open up new worlds of expertise and good eating.Bon appetit!

Julia Child was born in Pasadena, California. She graduated from Smith College and worked for the OSS during World War II; afterward she lived in Paris, studied at the Cordon Bleu, and taught cooking with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, with whom she wrote the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961). In 1963, Boston’s WGBH launched The French Chef television series, which made Julia Child a national celebrity, earning her the Peabody Award in 1965 and an Emmy in 1966. Several public television shows and numerous cookbooks followed. She died in 2004.

Simone ("Simca") Beck was born in 1904 at Tocqueville en Caux, Normandy. In 1933, she began to study at the Cordon Bleu, then the world’s supreme school of cuisine. In 1948 she was approached by a friend, Louisette Bertholle (now Comtesse de Nalèche), to collaborate on a French cookbook for Americans. In 1951, at the suggestion of her husband, they began to search for an American to help them, and a friend introduced Simca to Julia Child, then studying cooking in Paris. Soon afterward, the three women formed a cooking school, L’École des Trois Gourmandes, and began the collaboration that produced the several volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She died in 1991.