Career
Le Cordon Bleu had been founded in 1895 by Marthe Distel and Henri-Paul Pellaprat. Brassart managed to attract many notable chefs to teach at the Le Cordon Bleu under her tenure. She was a dedicated, smart, astute businesswoman who gave the school its impeccable international reputation.
Madame Brassart had an extraordinary vision of the future of cooking.
She understood before anybody that people around the world would enjoy not only their meals but also would enjoy cooking. The school was a very international school under her leadership. came from the United States of America, from Japan and around the world.
She had at the school some of the best chefs at this time, among them the famous Pellaprat. She had an extraordinary sense of humor (That she used to manage her Chefs).
She had renowned friends all around the world.
Madame Brassart managed the school until 1984, at the age of 87 she decided it was time to retire. She sold it to the present owner, André J. Cointreau. "The truth is that Madame
Brassart and I got on each other"s nerves.
She seemed to think that awarding a student a diploma was like inducting them into some kind of secret society. As a result the school"s hallways were filled with an air of petty jealousy and distrust.
From my perspective, Madame Brassart lacked professional experience, was a terrible administrator and tangled herself up in picayune details and politics.."- from My Life In France, excerpted in The New York Times, February 19, 2006
In the 2009 film, Julie & Julia, Brassart was portrayed by Joan Juliet Buck in accordance to how Child described her.
The movie has a caricatured version of her to dramatize a famous historical incident that Julia Child wrote about and others have repeated which certainly does not properly represent most people"s memory of her.
"Having known both women, we can safely say that it"s hard to imagine two less compatible people. Julia was tall and assertive with a loud, braying voice in English—one can only imagine what she sounded like in French. Madame Brassart, in contrast, was petite, elegant, and aristocratic, and spoke impeccable French and English, as well as several other languages.
She also was an important figure in culinary education, having successfully led Le Cordon Bleu from the late 1940s through 1985.
