The Store-Bought Snack Julia Child Always Served Before Thanksgiving Dinner
Famous, charismatic home cook Julia Child is beloved for many reasons, and one of them is this: as fancy and sophisticated as her favorite recipes were, she was also known to favor and savor food that was equally as ... un-fancy.
Her wide range of tastes, undying love for butter, and lack of discrimination towards all types of food are some of the things that made her so relatable. Because, sure, she regularly cooked elegant and complicated dishes like coq au vin and canard à l'orange, but she also loved Costco hot dogs and McDonald's French fries.
One of Child's favorite store-bought snacks made an appearance at her Thanksgiving dinner every year: Goldfish. Yup, those cheddar, fish-shaped crackers that you grew up munching on were served at the Child residence alongside what was undoubtedly an impressive homemade holiday spread. Why Goldfish? Because these crunchy, cheesy crackers perfectly complemented the chef's go-to martini.
Why these store-bought crackers belong with Julia Child's favorite cocktail
You might not think to pair what's largely considered a kid's snack with boozy cocktails (at a holiday dinner nonetheless), but it turns out that Julia Child's pick makes perfect sense — because Goldfish weren't always considered a children's snack. The crackers actually have a history as a bar snack and used to be served alongside cocktails before they became popular with the kiddos.
For Julia Child, Goldfish was an easy, no-brainer snack to put out during cocktail hour because the crackers made the perfect pairing for her favorite drink to sip on. The upside down martini — also known as a reverse martini — is a vermouth-forward cocktail that makes a great companion to this salty, savory, and slightly cheesy snack.
Goldfish have since made somewhat of a comeback in terms of their originally intended use as a bar snack, appearing not only in Julia Child's Thanksgiving menu but also in popular cocktail bars in the states. In fact, they're the only bar snack served at Dynaco, one of New York's best bars.
What's in Julia Child's favorite martini?
Dying to know what goes into this culinary legend's favorite cocktail? The drink Julia Child was known to love is called an upside down martini or a reverse martini because it literally reverses the ingredients and ratios in a traditional martini. Instead of one part vermouth to five parts hard liquor (typically vodka or gin), this cocktail is made with five parts vermouth to one part liquor.
Julia Child preferred a specific version of the upside down martini. She opted for gin as her liquor of choice, along with an extra dry vermouth; her favorite French brand was Noilly Prat. Child liked to garnish the cocktail with a lemon twist and serve it in an ice-cold glass.
The result is a very "wet" martini that brings the vermouth's herbal and slightly spiced notes with each sip. Child's go-to reverse martini offers a less boozy cocktail that can be slowly savored and enjoyed with your favorite bar snack — like Goldfish.