The Celebrity Chef Who Was Also A Spy For The Early CIA

Famous chef and TV personality Julia Child was known for her work in the kitchen. She introduced French cooking to Americans through her 1961 cookbook "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," the first of several books Child authored and one that remained a bestseller for five years after publication. Child also popularized French cooking through her hit TV show "The French Chef," which aired from 1962 to 1973, and through other television shows that followed. Child even made appearances on Good Morning America. Not only was she one of the first women to host her own cooking show on public television, but Child set the standard for French cooking at home and opened culinary doors for anyone who cared to learn.

Julia Child had critics, mostly people who pointed out inadequate hand washing in her shows or the fact that her recipes were high in fat. Others took issue with Child's sense of humor and her proclivity for playing in the kitchen. One critic's letter reads: "You are quite a revolting chef, the way you snap bones and play with raw meats." Child didn't pay much mind to these concerns and often responded with guidance on eating in moderation and complaints about people who were too uptight in the kitchen. While some people picked at her personality or hygiene habits in the kitchen, many overlooked a history that was much more interesting. Before Julia Child was a famous chef, she lived a very different life as a spy for the early CIA.

Before she was whipping up kitchen tips on how to make a store-bought French onion soup taste homemade, Julia Child was crafting shark repellant for soldiers in World War II, but she wasn't necessarily the James Bond caricature of a classic spy. She worked in China and was mostly behind a desk, working on a recipe to repel sea creatures instead of cooking them.

Specifically, Julia Child worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA, from 1942 to 1946 — two decades before she published her first cookbook. She worked in the Secret Intelligence Division for a while before moving over to the OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section. That's when Child got a first taste of developing a recipe. The goal was twofold: repel curious sharks to keep them from setting off underwater explosives and keep them away from soldiers in the water. Child helped create a repellant made from copper acetate and black dye that smelled like a dead shark. It was used on explosives targeting German U-boats and had a 60% success rate.

Julia Child's involvement in the Second World War led to her passion for French cooking. In her last two years with the OSS, Child left America and worked in Ceylon, present-day Sri Lanka, and Kunming, China. There, Child was Chief of the OSS Registry and handled top security messages from all of the OSS branches of intelligence. 

While Juila was working for the OSS in India, she met her husband, Paul Child, who worked for the US Foreign Service. After the war ended, Julia stopped working for the OSS and married Paul. The couple moved to Paris in 1948 for Paul's work, and there, Julia became interested in French cooking. She enrolled in cooking school at Le Cordon Bleu in a six-month course to learn French cooking techniques and joined a women's cooking club, Le Cercle des Gourmettes. During this time, she learned the skills she would later use to create her signature pre-Thanksgiving snack and learned how to make a meal a work of art. It was also in these circles where Child met the people she would partner with to write the cookbook that launched her career. 

After diving into the French culinary scene, Julia and her husband returned to the U.S. in the 1960s. They settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Juila continued to expand her career as a famous chef with TV programs and multiple cookbooks before her death in 2004.