Follow This Kitchen Tip From Julia Child Or You're 'Never Gonna Learn How To Cook'

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Few chefs in America's history have had the kind of impact Julia Child had during her many decades as a prominent author and television personality. Child opened the American mindset to new avenues of cuisine previously unexplored by the average layperson. She was instrumental in the widespread overhaul of kitchen design, helping make home culinary spaces more functional and accessible and less centered on style and appearance. While she wasn't the first chef to hit the television airwaves in the United States (James Beard was), she quickly became TV's first genuine cooking star, paving the way for modern-day celeb chefs like Ina Garten, who, ironically, wasn't allowed to cook growing up and who, like Child, didn't become famous as a TV chef until she was in her 50s. Food Network star Bobby Flay still draws constant inspiration from Child, as do many other prominent chefs of the modern day.

Among the many things Julia Child taught her adoring audience, one bit of advice covers all aspects of cooking (and all aspects of life, really): Don't be afraid of failure. "If you're not going to be ready to fail, you're not going to learn how to cook," Child once intoned on her groundbreaking TV show "The French Chef" (via YouTube). "Cooking is [...] one failure after another," she stated, "and that's how you finally learn." Never one to embody the "do as I say, not as I do" philosophy, Child experienced plenty of failure over the course her illustrious life, so she knew whereof she spoke. She was, in point of fact, a veritable poster "Child" for recovering from failure gracefully and plodding onward boldly.

Believe it or not, Julia Child wasn't a culinary phenom from the first time she picked up a knife. After she got engaged, she enrolled in a U.S. cooking school to prepare for life as a housewife and though she wasn't a star student, she was committed to the craft. When she finished her studies at the famous Le Cordon Bleu in France, she failed her first attempt at the exam required for graduation. It wasn't until the following year that she finally passed the test and belatedly received her diploma. And it was only after years of work, multiple rejections, and major revisions that the landmark book she co-authored with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," was finally published.

Child not only learned to be bold and persistent in the face of failure, but she perfected the art of failing with aplomb. In a famous TV segment, she prematurely flipped a potato cake, which promptly fell apart and spilled on the stovetop. Without missing a beat (or losing any composure), she smoothly acknowledged the failure and gracefully smooshed the broken pieces back together in the pan. In a similar on-air incident — once again making a potato recipe, this time her iconic two-ingredient potato dish, Pommes Anna — the spuds stuck to the frying pan as Julia attempted to invert them onto a tray. Again, the famous chef merely rolled with it, stating she was glad it happened, so cooks watching at home could see how to remedy the common mishap.

Child's shows were a constant study in recovering from failure — no retakes, no clever editing to make her appear perfect or her cookery unflawed. If she burned herself on the air, the TV audience saw it. If she accidentally grated her hand instead of the potato, she shared the anecdote with her viewers.