Everyone from Anthony Bourdain to John Besh to longtime friend Jacques Pépin has a memory about the woman who taught America how to cook by Sarah Le Trent / Photo by AP
Known for her distinctive chirruping voice and down-to-earth attitude towards French cooking (and one famously dropped roast chicken), Julia Child maintains an everlasting influence on generations of professional and home cooks.
On "The French Chef," Child taught America that anybody can cook with the right instruction while managing to be the best of both worlds: educational and engaging.
With the biographical movie, "Julie & Julia," hitting theaters nationwide on Aug. 7, AOL Food chatted with notable chefs and food personalities about their personal memories and thoughts of Child and her considerable impact on the way America cooks at home.
Chef Julia Child in a hail of Brussels sprouts in her kitchen.
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Julia Child explains 'with a little practice' you can do everything with the flare of a gourmet. She is shown in 1967 during a scene from 'The French Chef.'
AP
Television cooking personality Julia Child prepares a French delicacy in her cooking studio on Nov. 24, 1970.
AP
American chef Julia Child stands in front of a countertop in this 1965 photo holding a whisk and a ladle by a mixing bowl, possibly on the set of her television series, 'The French Chef'.
New York Times Co./Getty Images
Julia Child and her husband, Paul, enjoy a convivial glass of wine in outdoor setting.
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American television chef Julia Child shows a salade nicoise she prepared in the kitchen of her vacation home in Grasse, southern France, on August 21, 1978.
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Chef and cookbook author Julia Child is shown on Oct. 24, 1989.
AP/Susan Ragan
Chef and author Julia Child shows off tomatoes in the kitchen at her home in Cambridge, Mass., on Aug. 13, 1992.
AP/Jon Chase
Julia Child in a 1995 photo.
AP
Master chef Julia Child speaks to Food Network interviewer David Rosengarten during an interview at her home in Cambridge, Mass., on Aug. 11, 1997. As she approaches her 85th birthday (Aug. 15), Child continues to teach her television audience how to cook in a style that is uniquely Julia.
AP
"[She] singlehandedly created the cooking show as we know it, started the whole notion of the celebrity chef, created a market in which me and many of my friends have prospered,” said Anthony Bourdain, chef and host of Travel Channel's "No Reservations." "She changed not just the culinary world -- but the whole world."
With Child's trademark sign-off -- a jolly "Bon Appétit!" -- her knowledge and quirky charisma allowed Julia to teach America that any one can cook, even a 4-hour long boeuf bourguignon, with the right coaching.
Chef Jacques Pépin, Julia's longtime friend and collaborator, remembers what the 6-foot-2 doyenne of French cooking taught him when he first started doing television.
"I learned to be a bit more casual," Pépin told AOL Food.
But Pépin said while Julia might sometimes make mistakes in the kitchen, for her, the focus of cooking on TV was "what did I learn today?" Viewers, she thought, "should be learning something."
Child was a mentor to Chef Emeril Lagasse, and he made several appearances on her show 'Cooking with Master Chefs'. In the video below, he explains just what he loved about her "I don't give a crap" attitude.
Celebrity chef Sara Moulton, executive chef of Gourmet magazine, TV personality and cookbook author, first met Julia in 1979 while working as a food stylist on her PBS cooking show "Julia Child & More Company" and remained friends until Child's death in 2004.
"She was so spontaneous which is why everyone loved her," Moulton said, adding: "You never knew what she was going to do."
Chef John Besh of Restaurant August in New Orleans and cookbook author of "My New Orleans" went so far as to name Child "the ambassador of French Cooking."
"She was the first one to take the mystique out of cooking," Besh told AOL Food. “She was the pioneer of speaking about food in everyday terms and removing a lot of the snobbery from it.”
See what else Chef Besh told AOL Food about Julia Child. Click the arrow to start the video.
Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard spoke with AOL Food about Julia Child's influence on her career. Click the arrow to start the video.
Michael Psilakis, New York City chef and TV personality, raced home to watch Julia Child on television growing up because she reminded me of his grandmother -- "a big woman with big hands and funny accent."
More than that, Psilakis said Julia spread the culinary world to a lot more people than chefs like himself could ever touch in a dining room.
"What she really is teaching, more than the process of how to cook something, is the gift that food really is," Psilakis said. "She showed people that food is this glorious gift."
Child taught that life should be lived with an amount of joie de vivre and unashamed passion as Matt Lee of the James Beard Award winning cookbook author duo The Lee Bros. shared in this memory of Julia that involves bubbly and a sword.
"She was the speaker at a black-tie holiday dinner of an ancient Harvard arts organization. I don't recall a thing she said, but that she elicited plenty of laughter from the crowd, a mixed group of about 100, students, faculty and alumni," Lee said.
"Nearing the end of her remarks, she called for a saber and champagne bottle, and the dining room fell silent as she proceeded to perform that Napoleonic trick (shearing the cork and glass collar clean with a brisk stroke)," he continued.
"In this case, the cork sailed out over the crowd in a wide arc, taking what seemed like a full minute to cross the room, all eyes following," Lee said. "It nailed the economist John Kenneth Galbraith's red wine goblet, which shattered and dropped its full load on the tablecloth, at which point the entire room stood up and gave her a standing ovation."
With her undeniable presence and zest for life, Child reached out and touched audiences by being unpretentious and real -- changing foodways by convincing the home cook that "you can do it too."
Kat Kinsman, AOL Food senior editor, and Sara Bonisteel, AOL Food editor, contributed to this story.
I had the great pleasure of attending multiple culinary conventions with Julia Child. After each meal, she would take a few minutes to go into the kitchen and thank everyone from the head chef to the waiters for a delightful meal. Not only did she teach us how to teach cooking, write cookbooks and style food for photo shoots, but she taught us grace and appreciation for those who helped us in our own kitchens, TV shows and culinary classroom. I"m thankful for her time and influence that made me a better cooking teach both on TV and in the classroom.
Wow! "Various types of chickens"? What's THAT? Everything in America is now standardized, standardized, standardized, and we get very little choice in what we buy. The greedy corporate heads have done it again! There used to be shoes for females in America of varying widths. No more! It's narrow, standard, or wide. And that is ALL. My working-class mother wore a shoe width of 4 A's over 5 A's. Can you imagine trying to find that NOW, esp. without paying a fortune??? Hah!
Hi All: I saw the show last night and really liked it. It gave you a peak into her life and why she chose to cook. I loved the chicken scene,,, I remember watching her on t.v. and loved her upbeat attitude, even then....
I'm 87 years old and remember Julia well. Loved her show and she taught me a lot. Much more than the food shows today, some ladies who seem to view the kitchen as a style show, one in particular showing off her "crack" taking your eyes off what she is cooking! I doubt Julia would approve.
They were rerunning some of her shows on PBS a few weeks ago during Pledge Week. Not only did they take me on a nostalgia trip, but she made me laugh and even managed to teach me something once again. She had all the chickens lined up like little manaquins on the famous chicken show and I got to see and remember all the various types that used to be available in America until the generic skinny fryer and Christmas baking hen became all pervasive. She was such a wonderful personality.
Known for her distinctive chirruping voice and down-to-earth attitude towards French cooking (and one famously dropped roast chicken), Julia Child maintains an everlasting influence on generations of professional and home cooks.
