Mastering the Art of French Cooking
"Mastering the Art of French Cooking" Volume 1 was originally published in 1961 after some early difficulties. Beck, Bertholle, and Child initially signed a contract with publisher Houghton Mifflin, but Houghton Mifflin grew uninterested in the project. Child recalled one editor telling her, "Americans don't want an encyclopedia, they want to cook something quick, with a mix." 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." Judith Jones of Alfred A. Knopf became interested in the manuscript after it had been rejected. 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. Jones felt that the manuscript would offer a lifeline to middle-class women, like her, who were interested in learning how to cook French cuisine in America, and predicted that "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", "will do for French cooking here in America what Rombauer's "The Joy of Cooking" did for standard [American] cooking." While Jones was enthusiastic about the book, Knopf had low expectations and invested very little into promoting it. In order to generate interest in the book, and without support from Knopf, Child appeared on several morning talk shows in 1961 to demonstrate recipes, which she later cited as the impetus for her own cooking show, The French Chef.
Le Cordon Bleu
In 2007, an American writer, Kathleen Flinn, wrote "The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry", the first insider's account of attending the modern Paris flagship school. Flinn's best-selling memoir recounts the modern day-to-day trials of the program, and provides a further history of the school. The film rights for Flinn's book were purchased by the TV division of 20th Century Fox; an adaptation is expected to be filmed in Paris. Another book about attending Le Cordon Bleu was published in 2008 in the United Kingdom, "Sacré Cordon Bleu: What the French Know About Cooking" by Michael Booth (Jonathan Cape). Like Flinn's book, it also features numerous classic French recipes.
In 1991, Le Cordon Bleu published its first English-language cookbook, "Le Cordon Bleu at Home". As printed in the inside cover, the book: Alumni of the Paris location include Julia Child, Giada De Laurentiis and Gastón Acurio.
Alumni of the Los Angeles location include David Burtka.