Julia Child at 100: Celebrating Her Most Memorable Moments

Everyone has a favorite Julia Child moment, saying, or comedic culinary foible. She was famous for delivering personal cooking lessons through the magic of television. The upbeat chef educated Americans about foods beyond meat and potatoes and let them know that mistakes are a part of cooking. While wielding knives and cleavers, she showed viewers how to cut up swordfish, used her body to explain cuts of beef, and never feared reaching into a chicken carcass to grab the giblet.

On August 15, 2012, Julia Child would have turned 100. To celebrate, we collected a few of our favorite Julia Child moments. What's your favorite?

If it weren't for Julia Child's marriage to Paul Child, she might not have lived in France or sampled what would be a life-altering meal. Julia and Paul met in 1944 while they were in Sri Lanka. She was working for the CIA as the Chief of the OSS Registry. Paul, 10 years her senior and already a gourmand, was the head of the OSS's Visual Presentation Group. They married in 1946. In 1948, Paul was offered a job with the U.S. Foreign Service, which landed the couple in France. Fresh off the boat, they dined at La Couronne in Rouen. According to author Laura Shapiro, Julia had her first bite of Sole Meuniere and oysters while sipping Chablis. She described the fish as, "handsomely browned and still sputteringly hot under its coating of chopped parsley, and around it swirled a goodly amount of golden Normandy butter." Later she would describe it as, "A dining experience of a higher order than any I'd ever had before."

Julia Child wasn't always adept at cooking. In fact, her husband Paul once said, "I was willing to put up with that awful cooking to get Julia." After sampling France's transcendental cuisine, she enrolled at Paris's famed Le Cordon Bleu culinary school, but was unhappily placed in a "housewife" course. She was eventually accepted into the professional program alongside a group of GIs. She graduated in 1951 after first failing her final exam.

Just a year out of cooking school, Julia fortuitously met Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, who asked her to help them adapt their French recipes for the American cook. While collaborating on their cookbook, the trio opened L'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes, a small cooking school that offered cooking lessons for just $5. By 1958, they had an 850-page manuscript, which was rejected by their publisher and subsequently cut to 684 pages. But Houghton Mifflin rejected the book once again, fearing it was too overwhelming for the American novice. Luckily, it landed in the hands of Alfred A. Knopf's competent editor, Judith Jones, and the tome Mastering the Art of French Cooking was finally published in October 1961. Today more than 1.2 million copies of the book have been distributed.

The success of the book lead to Julia's first television appearance on WGBH's program, "I've Been Reading." She arrived with her copper bowl, eggs, mushrooms, whisk, and a hot plate and whipped up a basic omelet for the TV audience. After its airing, the station received dozens of letters from viewers begging for more of her cooking instruction. Julia shot a few pilots focused on three classic French recipes: an omelet, coq au vin, and a soufflé. The French Chef premiered on February 11, 1963, and over the next decade Julia Child became the country's most loved cooking instructor. She always let viewers know that if they made a mistake, "your guests will never know." She ended each show raising her wine glass while proclaiming, "This is Julia Child, bon appetit!"

You know you've made it when your face is on the cover of a national magazine. But the humble Julia Child took everything in stride when Time magazine labeled her the "Lady of the Ladle" and featured an artistic rendition of her famous face on the cover. In the same year, her cooking program was preempted by President Lyndon B. Johnson. According to the magazine, the station's switchboard was jammed for one full hour.

With her distinct sing-songy voice, Julia Child was often imitated — all in good fun. The icon was even parodied by comedian Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live in 1978. In the skit, Aykroyd, donning a wig, skirt, and well-stuffed bra, cleaned a bird while recommending to save the liver for liverwurst to spread on a Ritz crackers or to make chopped liver in the shape of a friend's head or to serve to your cat or dog. He also reminded the audience to use a very, very sharp knife until "cutting the dickens" out of his finger and hilariously proceeding to gush blood all over the chicken and the countertop, all while insisting, as Julia would, to remember to "save the liver." Years later, in an interview, Julia admitted the parody was "terribly funny."

Today we're accustomed to seeing Giada de Laurentiis, Martha Stewart, and Bobby Flay appear on morning news shows, but none of them would be there if it weren't for Julia Child. In 1980, Julia made her first appearance on Good Morning America with Charlie Gibson. She casually prepared recipes and soon was a regular fixture on the morning program. As ABC News adeptly explained, "Child showed GMA viewers how to make the most pretentious French cuisine in sometimes the most unpretentious way."

Julia brought her cooking equipment and a supply of ground beef to prepare a hamburger on Late Night with David Letterman. She revealed that the meat was leftover from her segment on Good Morning America. Letterman chatted with Julia as she set up her station, asking if she ever cooked anything that was awful, to which she replied, "Yes." Letterman followed up with, "and what do you do with it?" Without skipping a beat she replied, "I give it to my husband." The audience roared with laughter following her honest answer. Whether a set-up or another actual incident of a failed recipe, the burger meant for Letterman failed miserably, which he blamed on the pan on loan from Good Morning America. Julia, who always had a backup in mind, turned the meat into a raw beef tartar, which Letterman refused to eat.

Although Julia was fan of French cuisine, she was not a food snob. While she didn't eat fast food regularly, when asked to give her review of McDonald's, she told Time magazine in 1973 that "the French fries are surprisingly good." But when McD's stopped frying their potatoes in beef tallow, she lamented the change. In an interview, Julia said the fast-food joint "changed it to a nutritious type of oil" and "ever since they've been limp."

For a person who once said, "I was 32 when I started cooking, up until then, I just ate," it's remarkable that her kitchen wound up at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. In 2001, Julia Child left her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and donated the kitchen designed 40 years prior by her husband Paul. The kitchen was her studio — serving not only as a place to prepare the night's meals, but also where she researched and developed recipes and shot her public television series.

After her death in 2004, just two days shy of her 92nd birthday, Julia Child's legacy still lives on. In 2009, she was immortalized on the silver screen by Academy Award-winning actress Meryl Streep, who portrayed Julia perfectly. Julie & Julia was an adaptation of Julia Child's autobiography, My Life in France, written with her nephew Alex Prud'homme, and blogger Julie Powell's memoir, "Julie & Julia," in which Powell documented her attempt at cooking all of Mastering the Art of French Cooking's recipes over the course of one year. Streep received a Golden Globe for her portrayal of the late French Chef.