What Julia Childs thought of Julie Powell

Julie Powell, whose memoir inspired the 2009 film Julie & Julia, has died at the age of 49 at her home in Olivebridge, New York.

According to her husband, Eric Powell, the cause of death was cardiac arrest.

The chef and blogger began her year-long Julie/Julia project in 2002, which saw her cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Powell documented the process of cooking each recipe on her blog, including her ordeal with steaming a live lobster or the distinct comfort of making boeuf bourguignon.

Her blog which became so popular that she turned it into a best-selling memoir that was later adapted by Nora Ephron into the beloved comedy-drama Julie & Julia, which starred Amy Adams as Powell and Meryl Streep as Julia Child.

Julie Clain, Powell’s editor and head of the Little, Borwn publishing company, said in a statement to The Times: “Julie & Julia became an instant classic and it is with gratitude for her unique voice that we will now remember Julie’s dazzling brilliance and originality.”

But not everyone was a fan of Powell’s blog; namely, Child herself.

The TV chef, whose cookbook has been hailed as a gamechanger for American home cooks, was familiar with the online project but did not live to see the film, as she died in August 2004.

When asked about Powell’s project, Child told the Los Angeles Times: “Well, she just doesn’t seem very serious does she?

“I worked very hard on that book. I tested and retested those recipes for eight years so that everybody could cook them. And many, many people have. I don’t understand how she could have problems with them. She just must not be much of a cook.”

The fact that Child was not a fan of Powell’s blog was dramatised in the film. In a scene where Powells is told by a journalist that her biggest inspiration does not like her writing, the writer collapses to the ground wailing: “Julia hates me!”

But Child’ disapproval of her blog did not deter Powell from continuing to be a fan of the chef. She described the cookbook in a 2012 essay as “the greatest self-help book ever written, and not just for its approach to preparing food”.

“Though I never met Julia, she changed me, as she did with so many of her other acolytes,” Powell wrote.

“And she did it not by writing a traditional self-help manual or a motivational seminar but with a cookbook: an exhaustive, meticulously researched, accidentally profound cookbook.”

Powell is survived by her parents, John and Kay, her brother Jordon and her husband Eric.