Culinary giant Julia Child transformed the way we cook in America with her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, published in 1961.With her emphasis on gourmet ingredients and French cooking techniques, Child was ahead of her time, and it's a good thing, too: would the Food Network have room on its roster for a 6' 2” fifty year-old Francophile?

Child's endearing persona endures, and her influence shows no sign of fading: witness the success of Julia Powell's book Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, which documents Powell's attempts to teach herself to cook by systematically working her way through Child's legendary cookbook.

But how did Child herself learn to cook? A child of privilege from Pasadena, she was raised in a household where the meals were prepared by the maid. Child didn't take up cooking till much later in life, when she moved to Paris with her husband Paul, who worked for the United States Foreign Service. She studied at Le Cordon Bleu, but she also relied extensively on a book long regarded as “the bible of French cooking technique,” La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange.

La Bonne Cuisine was first published in France in 1927, but astonishingly, only just came out in English for the first time last October. It's no mere cookbook, rather a compendium of tips and techniques so fundamental to the art of cooking that even though the book is nearly eighty years old it's not outdated.

The 1,300 recipes are more down home than haute cuisine: the book's subtitle is “the Original Companion for French Home Cooking,” and it's been described as the French equivalent of the Joy of Cooking, or the Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Yes, this is old school French cooking, but the scope of this book is so broad that there are plenty of recipes that don't rely on cream and butter. The range of vegetable dishes is astounding.

The first recipe we tried was a simple, classic Salade Niçoise. This version, indisputably authentic, doesn't call for tuna, just as well since we're trying to monitor our mercury intake, anyway. Matt's eyeing the Bouef a la Bourguignonne recipe, planning to make it in our slow cooker. For me? The bouillabaisse beckons. Madame Saint Ange cautions that this dish “cannot be made properly except when close to a seaport.” Will a Citarella's two blocks away do?

The man we have to thank for finally translating this treasure trove is Paul Aratow, who co-founded Chez Panisse with Alice Waters in 1971. Aratow first stumbled across La Bonne Cuisine while a grad student in Paris in the 60's, and taught himself to cook from its pages.

When Aratow returned to the States he shared his newfound cooking skills with friends, and it was at one such dinner party that he met aspiring restaurateur Alice Waters. The two joined forces and the now legendary Berkeley restaurant was born.

“The idea was to open a restaurant like a French bistro, good solid country fare…we wanted to serve things that were not on anybody's menu back then – boeuf bourguignon, poulet au blanc, cassoulet…”

Chez Panisse is now a landmark, and Alice Waters has become arguably as influential as Julia Child, with her emphasis on cooking seasonally and the joys of sharing a well-prepared meal. Perhaps it's no coincidence that these two culinary forces were both so inspired by La Bonne Cuisine, given its revered status in French kitchens.

Paul Aratow spent years convincing his publisher that there was a market for an English version of La Bonne Cuisine; it took several more years to do the actual translation. Now that it's out, we can see what we've been missing for nearly eighty years. Oh, and if Julie Powell's looking for a sequel, here's a book that could keep her busy for the next few years.