An imagined gathering
1966 · Provence, France
Child rents a house in the south and cooks for David and Claiborne, who each claim the region as their own.
Child and her husband Paul have taken a house in the south of France for the summer, and the kitchen is a working laboratory as much as a holiday. She cooks for friends the way she cooks on television: loudly, generously, and with a running commentary on what is going wrong.
Elizabeth David has been writing about this part of France since the war, and Craig Claiborne has come from New York with a notebook and an appetite. David corrects the seasoning and the pronunciation; Claiborne asks how an American reader would find the ingredients. Child takes both, as she takes everything, as material for the next book.
Host: Julia Child
Elizabeth David — Author of *French Provincial Cooking*, the region's definitive English guide.
Craig Claiborne — The Times food editor, gathering recipes for the paper.
First course
by Julia Child
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.