I much admire her stove skills — I’ve used Mastering for 30+ years, with some stellar results. But 2 points must be made: She vastly overcomplicated cooking, and she was no technical writer.
“Whoa, Steve!” all the people say. “She never claimed to be a technical writer!”
Au contraire, mes pauvres. That’s exactly what she claimed to be, by publishing a cookbook. Cookbooks are the purest form of technical writing — a term that refers to a kind of writing, not the nature of the subject being written about.
Of course, much technical writing does address technical subjects, and I’ve toiled in those fields — Joe Bells and I wrote the manuals for the first U.S. tier-one automotive implementation of SAP. I deeply appreciate the skill, and I know few people who can write clear, concise, accurate instructions, in perfect order.
Julia’s are a total mess.
What you didn’t know:
- Julia Child was CIA. (Yep, look it up. They called it OSS then.)
- Technical writing was born in Detroit, long before computers.
And 1 little opinion
The most interesting challenge in cooking is to improve the nutritional values in a dish without sacrificing too much taste. Tonight at Boisfeuillet we’re exploring fruits de mer, drawing on some of the best recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child.
