Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste

by Luke Barr

It was a beautiful world, preserved in the amber of fiction and memory. A world of faded aristocrats and remembered vintages, of boat trains and small family-run hotels that never changed, of excursions to Switzerland and meals in French restaurants where the sole meunière was always impeccably fresh and perfectly cooked. The ethos and aesthetic of the period had survived all the way through the 1960s, a worldview held together with wit and irony, tone and inflection, unimpeachable taste, and finally, at bottom, enforced by the logic of money and privilege.

As I cooked in the kitchen at La Pitchoune, I could sense their presence, all of them—Julia at the stove; Paul opening wine; Beard, M.F., Beck, Jones, and Olney gathered around, offering advice and opinions and judgments. They spoke to me through their books and recipes, in the same way that my mother’s voice accompanies me in the kitchen. It was my mother, who died a few years ago, who taught me how to cook. And when I make something she made for me, or with me, I feel her presence—not in any literal or even ghostly way, but in the form of an atmospheric shift, an emotional warmth. It is striking how cooking binds us to the past, and to the people we love, even when they’re gone.