Food is, of course, a major theme in Julie & Julia, the new movie about Julia Child's life in France and modern-day New Yorker Julie Powell’s attempt to cook every recipe in Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

But place also plays a part. The movie begins as the Childs move from Washington, D.C. to Paris in 1949. The city instantly captures Julia's heart (and obviously her appetite). I'm an incurable Francophile, and all I could think about was what life was like in 1950s Paris. How much did Julia pay for the eggs she needed to whip up meringue? Were apartment rents exorbitant? Why, before she made the pivotal decision to attend the Cordon Bleu, did Julia dabble in hat-making?

I turned to the National Geographic archives for answers. This magazine has covered the City of Light at least two dozen times over the last five decades, but one story caught my eye with a title so perfect I had to read it twice: "Home Life in Paris Today, July 1950."

A woman named Deena Clark, who moved with her family to Paris for four months, wrote the article. Finding an apartment wasn't as easy as it seems in Julie & Julia. Clark reports: "Practically no housing has been built in Paris for years, and with the rigid control of rent ceilings there is not much inducement for anyone to relieve the shortage. Consequently, there are not enough houses for the French themselves." The Clarks got lucky with a flat overlooking the Seine, which cost "$208 a month...just about the same as we would have to pay for similar accommodations at home." She describes the kitchen in detail and, in Child-esque fashion, exalts a favorite tool: "In the basket each washed, crisp lettuce leaf was shaken thoroughly dry so that it was ready to drink up its freshly mixed dressing" (as seen in the photo above, which ran with Clark's story).

From here, Clark takes off on a food-themed trajectory, expounding on cheeses, apples, pastry, and lard. Recalling her first encounter with the pork butcher, she writes: "His excellent bacon, in chunky slabs ready to be cubed for soup, sold for 50 cents a pound." Clark learns a rule along the way and explains, "The Paris housewife soon collects a spindle of deposit slips. If you fail to take your own jar, you pay a 5-cent ransom on the jam glass provided for your cream." I wonder if Julia learned that the hard way. She must have spent a relative fortune on eggs--which Clark says cost "5 to 7 cents apiece, depending on their size and how recently they had left the nest"--for her countless soufflés. Clark is captivated by cream puffs and delighted by crisp rolls, which she happily proclaims are "all heel!" And finally butter, a thing of utmost importance to Julia. According to Clark, it came cubed and wrapped for 96 cents a half pound. The author goes on to say that a cheaper, more popular butter "squatted in watermelon-sized yellow mounds on marble slabs." These giant, creamy heaps, I then learned, were broken down in a most interesting way: "The proprietor filled customers' orders by deftly slicing off a portion with a taut wire held stretched between both thumbs and forefingers."

Food in the ‘50s in Paris obviously enthralled these American women. But what about my final question: Why did Julia ponder a hat-making hobby before turning to cooking? Clark's passage on fashion suggests that Julia was just trying to fit in: "Most Frenchwomen make their own clothes, and a demonstration of pattern cutting or hat-making always drew an enormous crowd." Julia probably would have been a fine seamstress, but I'm glad she went with food. A wonderful scene in the film sums it up when Paul Child asks his wife, "What is it that you really like to do?" And Julia bursts out the answer, "EAT!"

—Catherine Barker

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