Renowned chef honed skills at MDI summer home

Julia Child was not a household name when she visited Maine for the first time, probably in 1947.

Cooking was a hobby for her and not a profession. Her first book was a notebook she carried to scribble recipe ideas.

And her brother-in-law, the late Charles Child, was among the first to review her cooking.

In his book, “Roots in the Rock: The House – and the Life – They Built Together in Seacoast Maine,” Charles Child chronicles the construction of what became the family’s summer home at Lopaus Point, which overlooks Bass Harbor, a place where Julia vacationed often.

He also gives his impressions of Julia, the “tall willowy creature with dark curly hair and blue, blue eyes” who married his identical twin, Paul, a diplomat she met in Ceylon.

“[Julia] possessed more than a touch of the unexpected: she was a tough relentless worker at whatever she undertook, immensely systematic, determined to carry through anything before she began,” Charles Child wrote in 1947.

“Roots in the Rock” is supposed to be a family journal that can serve as a history of one 20-acre parcel of Mount Desert Island.

But people sometimes seek the out-of-print book at area bookstores to learn more about the simple side of Julia Child – the “delightful girl” who didn’t know fame was coming her way – and the dynamic, hard-working family that savored its summers on coastal Maine.

Julia Child, who died Friday in California, isn’t mentioned often in the book because its purpose is not to be an entire expose on the early years of a celebrity chef.

Yet the few passages that were written give insight into a career woman who found a hobby in French cuisine and used her family as guinea pigs for her cooking experiments.

While in Maine, those attempts at mastering the art of French cooking took place on a steel stove nicknamed “John Henry,” described aptly by Charles Child as “not at his best after having spent a number of years rusting gently through each winter in the cabin.”

“[Julia] would spend her free hours each day at the stove, notebook in hand, enthusiastically reeling out miles of cookies, pots full of Boeuf Bourgignon and Tripe a la mode de Caen,” Charles Child wrote.

During her 1947 visit, Julia would gather around “John Henry” with her sister-in-law, Fredericka or “Freddie,” and her nieces, Erica and Rachel, to cook the days’ meals of standard fare.

The old stove would give “forth a perfume – perhaps of strawberry shortcake, of bread, or of some delicious soup,” her brother-in-law wrote.

“Oh how we ate,” he said.

And Julia would teach Freddie and her nieces how to cook “straight from the Cordon Bleu.”

“What matter if from time to time the bouillabaisse had too much saffron, the petits fours came out slightly soggy; it all tasted delicious to appetites sharpened by cold air and heavy physical labor,” Charles wrote. “And to this one must add the joy or eating food prepared with loving care by members of one’s own family.”

The Lopaus Point home over the years served not only as a summer retreat for the Child family, but at times became a rental for people who wanted to experience its spectacular views of Bass Harbor and the ocean.

Nancy Tancredi of Cambridge, Mass., and her family rented the home for five years in the early 1990s. At the time, the rent was $500 a week – well worth the experiences she described as magical and whimsy.

“There was a feeling in the house, as it is in some houses but not all, that it was very welcoming,” said Tancredi from her vacation home on Beals Island. “It was just a very comfortable place.”

Inside the kitchen, pots and pans and utensils hung on the walls, mostly above the now gas-fired stove. The kitchen wasn’t fancy and the cooking tools weren’t either.

On the kitchen walls were outlines of the utensils, complete with comical-looking faces. Tancredi said the Child family one summer became bored and painted the outlines as a guide to which cooking tool hung where on the wall.

“It was very funky but very utilitarian,” said Tancredi about the kitchen. “I remember that everything we cooked came out very well.”