Julia Child's Favorite Oven Brand: 'I Loved It So Much I Vowed To Take It To My Grave'

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In the 1960s, chef Julia Child revolutionized cooking television with a 10-year hit series, "The French Chef" on Boston's local WGBH-TV. Sharing her favorite foods, such as sole meunière, with such easygoing flair made her one of the most endearing and well-known people in pop culture. The chef also shared the kitchen items that she preferred to use. As noted in her cookbook "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," Child only used bougie copper pans, and she favored using them on her Garland Model 182 stove.

In her memoir "My Life in France," Child recalls the first time she saw the range in 1956 at the home of CIA-famed Sherman Kent, also an epicurean, who was seemingly proud to show it to her. "It was a professional gas range, and as soon as I laid eyes on it, I knew I must have one." And, her friend was happy to oblige, selling it to her for around $400. She described the appliance as "a low, wide, squat black number with six burners on the left and a little flat-steel griddle on the right." She exclaimed, "I loved it so much I vowed to take it to my grave!" And, in an interview with The New York Times, she approvingly noted, "Nothing complicated about the Garland."

Julia Child was no stranger to using various kitchen equipment and tools throughout her career as a chef, author, and television personality. She even adopted modern technologies — such as blenders, food processors, and stand mixers — through the late 1900s to save time, but only as long as they produced results according to her standards. After she installed the Garland in her Washington, D.C., home in 1956, though, she never looked back. She even took it with her when she and husband Paul moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Garland Model 182 was a commercial range built in 1951, at around 58 inches wide by 32 inches deep, and Child used it for everyday cooking. It was instrumental in testing French recipes that ended up in her cookbooks and in teaching French cooking to local women at her Georgetown home. The stove was moved to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in November 2001.

Although Child used a Garland for everyday meal prep, and the brand still manufactures ranges, such massive restaurant equipment isn't recommended for residential use. That's because of how much heat they produce and the ventilation required to mitigate the grease and steam created while cooking.