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The Messy, Imperfect Days of Early Cooking Shows

Lately we’re loving the decades-old episodes of The French Chef, Julia Child, Julia Child & Co., and the Galloping Gourmet that are airing on the Cooking Channel, which make for a nice, nostalgic transition to dreamland. It’s especially great finding gems like Julia’s “Salad Niçoise” episode, in which she introduces a new-fangled Swiss device called a salad spinner! Unlike all those who’ve come later, with their formal training and food stylists, Julia’s plates were always an imperfect mess, no matter how much she touted their “attractive design.”

And now that all that Julie & Julia mess is behind us, you don’t need to hunt on YouTube or buy the DVDs. This stuff is on every weekday, so set your DVRs now.

Also, the Galloping Gourmet, with affably hyper British host Graham Kerr, is always good for a chuckle.

Please enjoy this montage, in which Julia discusses various onion chopping distinctions, her preference for “a one-and-a-half-gallon jug of mountain red” with her lasagna, her insistence that pork is “a party meat,” and we see Graham try unsuccessfully to get a pudding out of a mold to the audience’s great amusement. Would something like that ever make it on TV now?


The French Chef, Julia Child & Company [The Cooking Channel]
The Galloping Gourmet [The Cooking Channel]

The Messy, Imperfect Days of Early Cooking Shows