Historian David Strauss claimed in 2011 that the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking "did more than any other event in the last half century to reshape the gourmet dining scene".
[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.
[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] Beck, Bertholle, and Child wanted to distinguish their book from others on the market by emphasizing accurate instructions and measurements in their recipes, and authenticity whenever possible.
Child had noted early in the process that Americans would be "scared off" by too many expensive ingredients, like black truffles, and would expect broccoli, not particularly popular in France, to be served with many meals, and adjustments were made to accommodate these tastes.
"[13] Beck, Bertholle, and Child refused to make requested changes to the manuscript, and Houghton Mifflin abandoned the project, writing that the book, as it stood, would be "too formidable to the American housewife.
After spending several years in Paris, Jones had moved to New York, where she grew frustrated with the limited ingredients and recipes commonly available in the United States.
In an otherwise laudatory review of Volume 1, Craig Claiborne wrote that Beck, Bertholle, and Child had conspicuously omitted recipes for puff pastry and croissants, making their work feel incomplete.
This volume has been through many printings and has been reissued twice with revisions: first in 1983 with updates for changes in kitchen practice (especially the food processor), and then in 2003 as a 40th anniversary edition with the history of the book in the introduction.
"[22] Despite being a relatively expensive cookbook, retailing for $10 in 1965 (about $90 today), Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume 1 did well commercially, selling over 100,000 copies in less than five years.
"[25] Similarly, Nancy Ross of The Washington Post and Times-Herald argued that many of the recipes in Volume 2 would be far too time-consuming, difficult, and expensive for the American home cook, pointing out that the recipe for French bread provided in the book was nineteen pages long, took seven hours to complete, and required the use of "a brick and a sheet of asbestos cement.
The success of this film, combined with a tied-in reissue of the 40th Anniversary edition, caused it to once again become a bestseller in the United States, 48 years after its initial release.
"[28] By contrast, in 2009, food writer Regina Schrambling published a piece in Slate entitled, "Don't Buy Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking," where she argued that the book now "seems overwhelming in a Rachael Ray world," its recipes overly complicated and unsuited for modern American tastes.