The Way To Cook

The Way To Cook (1989, Knopf) is a cookbook and series of instructional videos written by the television personality and cooking teacher Julia Child; Child saw it as her magnum opus and considered it the culmination of her career as a cooking teacher. The book was published by Knopf, the firm that published almost all of Child's work from the beginning to the end of her career; the video series was produced with and marketed by the WGBH Educational Foundation in Boston but was shot at Child's home in Santa Barbara, California.

The Way To Cook differs from Mastering the Art of French Cooking in numerous ways. While Mastering was a collaboration that co-authors Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle had gotten underway before Child's involvement, The Way To Cook was a solo work written entirely by Child during the late 1980s. Another difference was that The Way To Cook did not focus entirely on French cuisine, on which her reputation had been built, but added a substantial number of recipes for traditional American dishes, especially those of New England, where Child's mother had come from and where Child had spent much of her life. In this, the book reflected the diversification of the cooking repertoire on Child's television show, Julia Child & Company, that had taken place since its premiere in 1978.

The book also formally described an approach to teaching that Child and others had been using since the very beginning, providing a more explicit focus on "master recipes"—that is, recipes that illustrate broad principles in cooking—with other recipes provided as variations on those same themes. The book also made greater use of improved cookware designs and of new technology such as the food processor, of which Child was a major proponent. The 1983 revision of Mastering was inspired in large part by the introduction of the food processor into the market.

The book immediately proved to be extremely popular, with four printings in the first month after its introduction; it remains in print nearly two decades later, in both hardcover and softcover editions. In December 2009, the videos, originally available only as a set of six videotapes, were re-released as a set of two DVD's.