The Editor Who Fought to Publish Julia Child When No One Else Would

It was early the week of Thanksgiving 1959 when William Koshland, an executive at the publishing house, Alfred A. Knopf, handed a thick, unwieldy stack of paper to Judith Jones. It was a cookbook, he said. Koshland, who hadn’t a clue about cookbooks, asked Judith if she’d weigh in. “Everybody knew that I had spent that time in Paris and that I did like to cook,” Judith told me. Koshland plunked the hulking thing on her desk, “probably,” Judith said, “because they thought it would amuse me, and then I’d probably reject it.” Judith eyed the manuscript. The book was huge—750 pages long. French Recipes for American Cooks by Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck, and Julia Child, the cover read. Judith didn’t recognize any of the authors’ names. Still, she was intrigued; unbeknownst to Koshland, Judith had been searching for a good French cookbook for years.

Ever since Judith and her husband Dick had returned from France, Judith had been pining for la cuisine française. The couple had done their best to recreate the dishes they’d eaten in Paris, but most of their attempts fell short. The American foodscape had shifted radically in the postwar years, with small grocers and specialty shops giving way to supermarkets that kept food in boxes, cans, and behind glass. “Everything was going into packages so the ‘poor little woman’ wouldn’t soil herself with cooking, the ignominy of cooking,” Judith told me. “It was a whole emphasis; everything was done for you. It was really sort of pathetic!” How, Judith wondered, was one to judge a fish’s freshness without poking it, or the ripeness of a melon without giving it a sniff or squeeze?

Judith tried to make do. But even with a begrudging acceptance of products far below the standard she’d grown accustomed to in France, Judith lacked the instruction she needed to guide her to success. She’d tried cookbook after cookbook, finding each one lifeless and uninspired. What rankled her most, though, was that the books didn’t work. At the time, most cookbooks relied on cursory instructions and assumed a great deal of skill and knowledge among home cooks. All that brevity and vagueness left ample room for improvisation (and error). Not one of the French cookbooks Judith tried offered the precision, detail, or depth of explanation she sought. She told Koshland she’d have a look at French Recipes for American Cooks.

Julia Child had moved to Paris in late 1948 with her husband, Paul, who worked for the State Department as an exhibits officer. Paul already knew and loved Paris and had a feeling his new wife, Julia, who’d never been to France before, would, too. He was right. With her first bite of sole meunière, Child, who loved to eat and had tried and failed to teach herself to cook as a newlywed living in Washington, DC, fell head over heels with French cuisine. Shortly after their arrival in France, Child enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu to learn how to cook it herself.

Not long after completing her course, Julia Child met Simone “Simca” Beck at Le Cercle des Gourmandes, a Parisian club for gutsy food-loving women. Beck and her friend, Louisette Bertholle, had been working on a French cookbook for Americans for years by then, but had been unable to get it into print. They’d been advised by someone in publishing to find an American to offer the “inside” perspective they needed to get through to home cooks in the States. Beck had picked Child out of the crowd. (It wasn’t hard to do; Julia was 6 foot 2.) The two French women asked Child if she’d join their writing team to help revise and re-pitch the book. Child enthusiastically agreed.

Having learned to cook French food as an outsider, Child understood the book’s intended audience in a way Beck and Bertholle could not. In order to work, she insisted, the book would have to be so detailed and clear that even Americans who knew nothing at all about French cuisine—or even how to cook—could successfully prepare the dishes therein. At Julia’s behest, the three stripped the book down to its studs and, recipe by recipe, began to retest and rewrite the entire thing. They explained everything with a granular, step-by-step approach, from how to shop for the right cuts of meat to how to simmer, sauté, and salt. The book was all-consuming, and reworking it took years.

French Recipes for American Cooks was different from all the other French cookbooks. Judith saw that right away. “I knew from the tone, from the writing,” Judith told me, “that I was going to learn things.” Judith took the book home in pieces to cook from it with Dick; cooking together was the anchor of their domestic life. They started with the boeuf bourguignon. “First [ Julia] told what kind of meat to use, which is so important,” Judith recalled. “And what kind of fat to use—if you brown the meat just in the butter, the butter burns. She told you not to crowd the pan, because you steam rather than brown the meat, and doing the mushrooms and the little onions separately. It just went on and on, these suggestions. I couldn’t believe it! Well, it was the best boeuf bourguignon we’d ever had!” Judith said. French Recipes actually taught readers how to cook. Judith thought it was revolutionary. The very book she’d been looking for had fallen right into her lap. But Knopf’s editorial board, Judith knew, was unlikely to be as enthused as she about such a project. Judith would have to channel her excitement into a convincing argument and a workable strategy if she wanted a chance at the book.

Judith tried to focus. There were pages to mark up, memos to write, and correspondence to attend to. Usually, she could block out the world at work, lost in authors’ pages, green pen in hand. She puzzled over structure and word choice, attended to cadence and tone. But that morning in April 1960, her attention had strayed, and she couldn’t rein it back in. Behind closed doors, the Knopf bigwigs were in a meeting, discussing the fate of French Recipes for American Cooks.

Judith had, by then, read every word of the book and cooked through a good portion of it at home. In an impassioned memo to her colleagues, she wrote: “I don’t know of another book that succeeds so well in defining and translating for Americans the secrets of French cuisine. Reading and studying this book seems to me as good as taking a basic course at the Cordon Bleu.” She knew les trois gourmandes were onto something. Something big. Judith told me, “I thought, if I love this so much and want to learn, there are other people like me.” Judith believed Knopf should publish the book, and she wanted it to be hers. But someone else would have to make the pitch on her behalf.

Though Judith had been at Knopf more than three years, she still hadn’t been invited to discuss submissions or acquire on her own. “I didn’t even go to our editorial meetings,” she told me, “I wasn’t enough of a”—she paused, searching for the right phrase—“‘matured editor.’ I wasn’t that young then, but people just perceived me as more of a secretary. That’s the word they would use.” So Judith sat helplessly at her desk, waiting to hear what her bosses’ verdict on French Recipes would be.

Judith understood what she was up against with the cookbook. It wasn’t only that she was considered so junior or that she was a woman, though she knew her sex certainly didn’t help; as a rare woman in publishing, Judith told me, “you were kept down.” It was that Knopf had no real interest in cookbooks. None of the major publishing houses did. Though Judith experienced the kitchen as a place of pleasure, experimentation, creative engagement, and play, much like the day in, day out work of home cooking itself, cookbooks as a genre were patronized, written off, or altogether ignored. Their authors weren’t seen as real writers, and cookbooks were considered decidedly unliterary in subject and form.

French Recipes was a risk all around. It was technically complex and very long. It would be expensive to print, which would mean its price point would have to be high—three knocks against it right out of the gate. But sticking her neck out for a cookbook was also dicey for Judith’s reputation at Knopf. She risked being pigeonholed as unserious and unduly interested in “women’s stuff.” Judith needed an in-house ally, someone to advocate passionately on both her and the book’s behalf if French Recipes was to stand a chance. Someone trusted, senior, and male.

Angus Cameron arrived at Knopf in 1959, already a veteran of the publishing industry. He’d been at Bobbs-Merrill, then Little, Brown, where he published J. D. Salinger, Lillian Hellman, and Evelyn Waugh. He became Little, Brown’s editor in chief in 1943. Cameron was known for taking risks on the right books; he’d once been called “the foremost United States book editor.” Judith watched how Angus Cameron handled the senior editors at Knopf. She particularly admired his ability to get through to Alfred when the publisher was in a mood. “Angus knew so much and was so interested,” Judith told me. “He was a brilliant person, and a true Renaissance man.”

Judith and Angus became friendly and often went to lunch, talking about books, food, and wine. But Angus didn’t just love to eat and cook. He knew cookbooks, too. At Bobbs-Merrill, Cameron had helped debut the first commercial edition of Irma S. Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking in 1936; to date, it remains one of the best-selling cookbooks of all time. At Little, Brown, he’d published Dione Lucas, a restaurateur who, in 1942, founded the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Manhattan. For many years, Lucas was considered the most prominent American teacher of French cooking, and Lucas herself the hub of New York’s niche food scene. So when Judith realized what gold she had in les trois gourmandes’ book, she knew Angus Cameron was the one to go to for help.

Judith gave Cameron French Recipes and asked him for his honest opinion. She braced herself for disappointment, but as it turned out, she needn’t have worried at all. Angus was as blown away by the book as Judith had been. “Both as aspirant cook and editor,” Cameron wrote in his reader’s report, “this seems to me, short of actually trying the recipes, the best working French cookbook I have ever looked at. To my knowledge what these authors have done has never been done before…I am convinced that a path will be beaten to the door of this book.” Page after page, Cameron detailed his faith in the book, going to bat for its cause.

In the editorial meeting that April day while Judith waited anxiously at her desk, Cameron gave an impassioned pitch to echo his gung ho report. The book was an astonishing achievement. There was simply nothing else like it, he said. As far as money was concerned, Cameron didn’t think the high cost of production and, thus, the book’s high retail price, would hinder its sales. Knopf should take the book, Cameron urged, and put Judith at its helm.

Blanche Knopf fidgeted grumpily as Cameron went on. Judith was hers, and the last thing Blanche needed was some silly cookbook competing for her desk editor’s time. Finally, Blanche had had enough; she pushed back her chair and huffed out of the conference room. There was a beat of silence, then Alfred Knopf spoke. “Well,” he said gruffly, a smile turning up the corners of his mustache, “let’s give Mrs. Jones her chance!”

Judith was jubilant when Cameron told her the news. She wrote to Julia Child right away. “Our publication proposal for the Child, Beck, and Bertholle has just been approved.” Knopf offered $1,500 for the book. Judith reiterated the book’s brilliance, but emphasized in her letter that it was nowhere near ready to go to press. The team had a massive undertaking ahead.

Julia, acting as chief correspondent on behalf of les trois gourmandes, wrote that she was overjoyed at Knopf taking the book and noted her surprise that Judith had cooked from it. “It means that we can have truly meaningful communication,” Child said. It was clear, though, that Child didn’t quite see the scope of revision their new editor had in mind. “The final manuscript can be ready for you certainly within a month,” Child wrote in May 1960. “I shall start right in on it now.”

Excerpted from ‘The Editor’ by Sara B. Franklin. Copyright © 2024 by Sara B. Franklin. Reprinted by permission of Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.

Sara B. Franklin, PhD, is a writer and professor at New York University’s Gallatin School for Individualized Study. ‘The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America’ (Atria Books, 2024) is her third book.