Julia Child's TV Kitchen c. 1964

 Fascinating.

Later in her TeeVee career, she used her own kitchen in her Cambridge, Massachusetts, home rather than a television set, but early on, she worked in a number of somewhat different studio kitchens that strongly resembled what an average middle class housewife would have. It's interesting to see them now and compare and contrast with today's "insane" kitchen renovation ideas.

The first thing you notice in her "Chicken Dinner in Half an Hour" video is... the island. Islands were not common in real kitchens in those days -- except on TeeVee. And why? Well, in order to demonstrate her cooking on screen, she -- and the food -- needed to face the camera. Prep and cooking in a real kitchen would almost always be done with the housewive's back to the room. And in her Chicken Dinner video we see her using a GE push button electric cooktop on the island while there is another similar cooktop on the counter to her right. She never uses it on the screen. Electric wall ovens -- which we don't see in the Chicken Dinner video, but they're there -- are to the left of the countertop cooktop, and a bottom freezer refrigerator is to the left of that. Uh no. The refrigerator is a top freezer model and it is way to the right of the sink, barely seen most of the time. Behind her is a double bowl porcelain on iron or steel sink with a pull out sprayer. Bench tops/counters form an L-shape. The kitchen set is compact, and if it were real, the island would probably be a counter (without the cooktop) against a wall.

What is a GE push button electric cook top? Indeed, you don't see those any more. We had one in our house built in 1957. It was considered ultramodern at the time. A built in cook top with push button control was very Space Age, though GE had been producing push button freestanding ranges since the '40s. The burners were Calrod open coils, and the push buttons allowed for several levels of heat from Lo-simmer to High-sear. The burners heated up pretty fast but not as fast as a gas burner, and they cooled much more slowly than a gas burner, meaning that pans had to be taken off the burner altogether to lower their temperature quickly and prevent burning the food. OK, you had four burners on the cook top, rarely used more than three at a time, so there was one open burner where you could put a pan to cool. 

Julia wound up facing something of a dilemma as she cooked her Chicken Dinner as she was using all four burners at a time, and she didn't have any place to put a pan to cool. So she turned the burner off under the pan that needed cooling and hoped for the best. It seemed to work out ok. Whew.

She had three saute pans going at once and a huge boiling kettle. Each of her saute pans was different. The first was a Farberware stainless steel (with aluminum core) frying pan. I know because we had one just like it. In this she sauted her cut up chicken. The first thing I noticed was that the chicken didn't stick. I never had a problem with sticking on Farberware stainless steel saute/fry pans either, but they say newer stainless steel pans -- like Allclad and so on -- are notorious for sticking. Everything. There are supposedly work-arounds to make them nonstick, but experience says it's hit or miss at best.

Julia also used a Teflon coated fry/saute pan to cook her diced potatoes. She often said how much she loved the non-stick pans that were just being introduced at that time. Very Space Age. She never mentioned the obvious problems with them - the fact that the Teflon would peel off all by itself or when the surface was scratched in normal use. Interestingly, Teflon coated pans still have that problem. 

Her third saute pan appeared to be a professional kitchen aluminum pan that was not widely available for civilians at the time. Much later, we had one and we loved it. Even heat, excellent cooking, easy clean up. As long as it wasn't used for acid foods like tomatoes, it was a joy to use. 

Her boiling pot was an enormous aluminum job, which once it was filled with water was practically unmovable even by someone as sturdy as Julia. She boiled her eight zucchinis and three tomatoes in it. These days such a pot would be used for pasta, spaghetti especially, and not much else. Because they are so heavy and awkward when filled with water, renovators have taken to installing "pot filler" faucets at the cooktop/range, but there is still the little problem of disposing of the water once the boiling is done. An alternative method of cooking pasta has become fashionable: boil it in just enough water to cover, let the pasta absorb most of the water, and then have very little to drain and wrestle around. 

There appears to be no dishwasher on her kitchen set, actually there is one to the left of the sink, I just didn't see it initially, but not having  dishwasher would actually be the situation in most homes at the time. Our 1957 kitchen had a space that could be used for a built in dishwasher but none was installed, and that was fairly typical of all but the fanciest middle class homes at the time. They save you the trouble of washing dishes, but they don't really save you at all since the dishes and pots and pans need to be washed by hand first before they are put in the dishwasher. Hopefully they will come out cleaner. We had a portable dishwasher rather than a built in, and we used it now and then. The point was to "disinfect" which the hot water and soap was supposed to do. You still had to wash the dishes and pots and pans by hand first.

Julia had a lot of counter space in her TeeVee kitchen, and that was pretty typical of home kitchens at the time, too. Her counters appeared to be surfaced with Formica. Now of course Formica has fallen out of favor, and no renovator with any sense of pride or dignity would use it. That's too bad. Formica and its variations were excellent counter top materials and they still are. The issue these days is that Formica is "cheap," and "cheap looking." Whether or not it wears well and serves the purpose is irrelevant.

Counter tops must look and be expensive, which stone and its many synthetic imitations are. So stone and quartz and whatever actually is expensive are mandatory in new renovations -- or you may as well disappear.

Formica was good enough for Julia Child, though. Even in Cambridge. At least that's what her counter tops appeared to be. Most of the time. (Actually, according to the Smithsonian which proudly displays her Cambridge kitchen, her home counter tops were wood, butcher block. Hm.)

On her TeeVee set she also had a large wooden cutting board that sat on the counter top beside the island cook top/range. There she chopped and chopped and chopped and chopped. Later, I think she had a marble pastry board installed on the other side of the cook top. But as far as I remember, at no time did she replace her work surfaces with granite, all marble, or quartz.

Julia also had a large number of built-in cabinets on her TeeVee set -- but not, as I recall, at her home. These cabinets, uppers and lowers, stored everything. There were no open shelves. The idea of open shelves was appalling. Dust, grime, the mess, endless cleaning. Every upper cabinet had doors, as did every lower storage cabinet. Drawers held miscellaneous tools and equipment, but she also had a magnetized knife rack on the wall beside the sink and what looked like a plastic fishing tackle box with many little drawers screwed to the wall on the other side of the sink for spices and other condiments.  I imagine that was her idea, or possibly her husband Paul's. 

Julia's TeeVee kitchens changed and changed over time, and finally, she used her home kitchen -- with an island installed so she and her guests could face the cameras. It was... cramped. 

But the kitchen set where she prepared her half hour chicken dinner was perhaps the best of the lot, the closest to what many middle class housewives had in their post-war houses -- well, except for the island.

And there is some nostalgia for recreating that among us old folks. 

One thing nostalgic kitchens feature is the built in range and oven, the oven(s) at a convenient height so you don't have to bend down, and a broiler at eye level and not on the floor. It is possible -- but very expensive -- to do that these days. But I guess it's not as expensive as one of those monster French or Italian ranges that are so fashionable! 😄

So a nod to Julia Child for never being afraid and never being a victim of kitchen fashion. You go girl!

The Cooking Shows

Since we've been mostly confined to home due to the virus, I've spent quite a bit of time watching the cooking shows on Create TV (we don't have cable, and I resist the cooking shows on Netflix and Roku). I've noticed a consistent visual, equipment, and action vocabulary that is practically inviolable across all the shows.

 1) Nobody measures anything. All ingredients are pre-prepared and preset for use in recipes, a form of mise en place, that is never explained, never shown being prepared, never indicated as a professional kitchen shortcut.

Back in the day, by contrast, Julia Child measured everything. She even sifted her flour! Something unheard of these days.

2) Everyone uses only Kitchen Aid stand mixers and Cuisinart food processors. If another brand creeps in (as sometimes happens in early episodes of a particular cooking show) they will be replaced with the official brands shortly.

3) Everyone sprinkles salt and pepper and other dry seasonings with their fingers from on high; no one ever uses a salt or pepper shaker under any circumstances.

 4) Related: Only kosher or sea salt is ever used, never iodized table salt. Black pepper is always "freshly ground" even though it may be pulled by the fingers full from a dish like the kosher/sea salt.

5) Herbs are almost always fresh cut like flowers from the garden. Dried herbs are rarely seen let alone used, but when they are, they are almost always from some artisinal outfit, never from a commonly known commercial spice company. Ever!

6) Primary cooking is frequently done in an enamel coated cast iron Le Creuset dutch oven. This is a multi-hundred dollar kitchen item that few home cooks can afford let alone use. Electric cooking appliances are almost never seen. Deep fat frying is done in the dutch oven on top of the stove with a thermometer stuck to the side of the pan. An electric deep fat fryer which can maintain a set temperature without an attached thermometer would violate some code of operation. You will never see an electric skillet, griddle, or even waffle iron. Common utensils are rarely seen, replaced with expensive specialty items like specialized fish turners and the like. You never even see a can opener or a toaster.

7) The only canned items used on television cooking shows are imported (generally from Italy) and they are primarily confined to certain specially grown tomatoes. The cans are already opened when their contents are called for in the recipe.

8) Ingredients in general are almost always hard to obtain for most home cooks and require expeditions to high end and specialty grocers, often requiring visits to multiple stores before all ingredients can be obtained. Everything will be expensive, one meal, sometimes one dish costing as much as the weekly food budget for a family.

9) Multi-step recipes that can require a whole day or more of preparation -- brining, rubbing, marinating, sus vide pre-cooking, grilling, etc. -- before serving. If anything is cut or chopped on air it is either done with a mandolin, food processor, or "crazy knife skills." Pressure cookers are never used or seen, although I once heard mention of such devices. 

10) Plating and serving is often an entire production in itself, requiring special plates, tools, and techniques. Foods are stacked or set at intricate angles. There may be a bed of some exotic grain or uniquely prepared potatoes (purple and yellow are favored) or unusual rice. Just as often, there may be a vegetable base of unusual greens or chopped and 'caramelized' something or other. A delicate sauce and dots of foamed stuff are drizzled around the portion, which itself glistens and sparkles under the studio lights as if glazed with something unmentioned in the recipe. In fact, there often is an extra glaze on the finished dish added just for the cameras, or so I'm told.

11) Plating and serving is done slowly, reverently, with the cook/chef bent over close to the plate, placing micro greens with precise micro tongs, dusting with seasoning, sesame, or what have you, adding a sprig of violets or other edible flowers at the end, and carefully wiping the rim of the plate with a handy towel before actually presenting the dish. 

12) If the dish is sampled on air, it is done as slowly and reverently with much mmming and ohhhing, and "that is SO good"-ing. Words like "AMAZING!" are required. You hear "amazing, caramelized, and umami" frequently used throughout the preparation, serving, and sampling of the dish or meal. "Brown bits," "fond," "pan sauce," "deglazing".... and on and on, the specialized cooking vocabulary keeps expanding, often without explanation. "Umami" suddenly became the it-word often used without any definition or explanation, just assuming the audience would know it refers to savory flavors in Japanese.

13) The Big Idea of most of these cooking shows is to 1) bring high end restaurant techniques and ingredients into the home cook's frame of reference; 2) sell very expensive equipment and ingredients to home cooks who are expected to diligently search out these items; 3) make it possible to make the "impossible" restaurant dish at home (maybe); 4) present and maintain food fantasies for the masses. Alternatively, make home cooking equivalent to specialty cooking, and make it a race to accomplish the "impossible" within a half-hour or hour format. 

Contrast this contemporary television cooking with what was common in early days of these shows (think Julia Child in her first incarnation but not just her) and go back even farther to when home cooking was presented as an exercise in precision and science, but always respecting budgets. Healthy meals at reasonable cost prepared carefully and often quickly with modern but not excessive appliances.

In the old days, restaurant techniques -- whether high end or diner -- were often simply ignored in order to present what could reasonably be done at home. Julia went to the Cordon Bleu in Paris and so she knew full well how to do fine French cooking in the highest and most intricate manner, but the whole point of the show was to do something not necessarily "fine cooking" at all, but something adapted to the home, to standard ingredients and appliances, and something that might actually be found in a country French home rather than a high end Parisian restaurant. Her close friend Jacques Pepin offered much the same idea of French cooking in his own shows later. It doesn't have to be "impossible." 

Yet today, apparently, what's truly "impossible" is television cooking shows geared to households whose money is tight, whose time constraints ensure they can't constantly seek out the rarest of ingredients and super-luxe equipment, and where quick, nutritious and tasty meals are more important than being able to spend all day attempting to duplicate a restaurant meal that the household will never experience in the flesh. 

It's a mystery.