kamman first learned to cook as a young girl at her aunt's michelin-starred restaurant in touraine, france.' she returned to paris at the end of the world war 2 with the hope of attending university, but finances required her to work. she later attended le cordon bleu in paris, and met, in 1959, the american alan kamman. they married and moved to philadelphia, but, by her own admission, she did not easily adjust to life in the united states, in part because she found american cooking and ingredients in the early 1960s inferior to those of her native france. she suffered from depression, but used cooking as an antidote, and started giving cooking classes in 1966. in 1968, kamman moved to the boston area and thereafter opened a cooking school, the modern gourmet, with a restaurant, chez la mère madeleine, staffed by students from the cooking school.