6][7] The resulting cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, proved groundbreaking and has since become a standard guide for the culinary community.[
In the early 1950s, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, French cooking teachers who had trained at Le Cordon Bleu, sought to capitalize on the American market for French cookbooks and wrote and published a small recipe book for American audiences, What's Cooking in France, in 1952 .[5] By the late 1950s, Beck and Bertholle were interested in writing a comprehensive guide to French cuisine that would appeal to serious middle-class American home cooks. Beck and Bertholle wanted an English-speaking partner to help give them insight into American culture, translate their work into English, and bring it to American publishers, so they invited their friend Julia Child, who had also studied at Le Cordon Bleu, to collaborate with them on a book tentatively titled "French Cooking for the American Kitchen".[6][7] The resulting cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, proved groundbreaking and has since become a standard guide for the culinary community.[8]