“Neither Chicken nor Egg: In the Beginning There Was an Omelette” Film Screening with Verena Mund

This is where the cookbook differs from the cooking show. In Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961), the omelette is not mentioned until chapter three. But this egg recipe is right in the middle of the three pilots of Julia Child’s cooking show The French Chef (1962-1973). The recipe is cheap, full of basic techniques, and not too hard to learn to be a lot of fun. David Goldfarb’s TV show Julia from 2022 also relies on an omelette to tell the story of the pivotal moment when Child first appeared with eggs and a pan on television.

As background for the lunch talk “Raising the Bar: The French Chef, Housewives, and ‘Real Cooks’” on October 10, the shows The French Omelette (episode 4 of season 1 of The French Chef, 1963, WGBH) and Omelette (episode 1 of season 1 of Julia, 2022, HBO Max) will be screened and contextualized to help better understand the roles of feminist critique, unacknowledged labor, transnational exchange, and media technology in the history of this show.