The Women Who Caused a Revolution in Cooking

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This week, Lily Meyer offered readers a beautiful ode to Judith Jones, the legendary publishing figure who essentially created the modern cookbook. It’s a review of Sara B. Franklin’s new biography of Jones, The Editor,  but it’s also an explanation of how the writers Jones gathered around her, including, most famously, Julia Child, were at the center of a revolution in cooking. They wrote about the preparation of meals as an act of exploration. As Meyer put it, “They were a group of curious, courageous thinkers who, with Judith’s guidance, turned food into an intellectual project, writing books that, far from denigrating cooking as drudgery, presented it as a daily necessity that also, per Judith, ‘empowered you, that stimulated you.’”