Recognizing this cookbook’s innovation was its teaching of French culinary methods, she suggested an important word change: The initial recipe offering instruction for a cooking procedure needed in all cases to be renamed “the master recipe.” Judith preferred that term because it suggested that it is not only important “but the one that establishes a standard.”Īs editor, Judith offered directions for making the text more precise. In working through the manuscript, Judith focused on language, raising issues large and small. For example, Judith cautioned against the use of the impersonal “one” and urged that Julia change it to the more familiar “you.” In Judith’s judgment, “one” was both “mannered” and sounds as though it were a translation from the French “on.” She gave Julia an added reason for the suggested change that likely hit home: “you attract the reader more by addressing him or her directly.” She went beyond simply making corrections to giving their rationale, enabling her author to understand why a change was needed. She first addressed technical matters and then turned to general issues involving style. Judith’s editing of the first section of her manuscript was a 19-page document titled “NOTES ON PART I OF FRENCH COOKBOOK.” In preparing it, she likely followed the publishing house’s practice. In May 1960, when Knopf accepted the manuscript for what became Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Judith Jones-both a respected editor and an avid cook-helped shape the book’s organization and language.
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