During the twentieth century, French cuisine continued to influence American cookery. Elizabeth Pennell, M. F. K. Fisher, and Julia Child spent time in France and brought their discoveries back to the United States. Julia Child, along with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, published Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961), and two years later Child began her stint on the WGBH television program The French Chef, which ran on public television for two hundred episodes. This program introduced her version of French cooking into American homes and clearly sparked an interest in French cooking in America. Her sign-off, “bon appétit,” has become a part of America’s vocabulary. Simultaneously, French chefs and French-trained chefs, such as Jacques Pépin and Emeril Lagasse, have flooded into the United States to dazzle Americans with French cooking on other television series. Other Americans used their experience in France to criticize American cooking rather than convince Americans that they should learn how to cook a bastardized form of French cookery.
