Julia Child Bolstered Lasagna's Flavor With An Unexpected Citrus Ingredient

In America, Julia Child's name will forever be synonymous with French food. Yet, the preeminent culinary teacher and television host wasn't exclusive with her love of food; she demonstrated a surprising range on her show, considering the times, exposing her viewers to new tastes, including Chinese food and an international curry or two.

Still, Child never strayed far from her bread and butter, which were definitively Western and European cuisines. One that Child seemed to take special pleasure in — or, rather, special pleasure in mashing up — was Italian. Julia Child's recipe for lasagna, called lasagne a la Francaise, caused quite a stir back in the day. It was far from traditional and prioritized a mix of leftovers and French ingredients.

In season 7 of "The French Chef," Child took all but 30 minutes to obliterate viewers' preconceptions about lasagna — while simultaneously (we imagine) stoking Italian-Americans into a fury. It was a few additions to the vibrant pasta sauce, dried orange peel and saffron threads, that truly took things in a new direction. While not specified by Child, anyone who's tried this recipe can taste that the dried orange peels make the sauce far headier than your standard tomato affair, giving acidic, floral hints of citrus that lighten it by degrees.

Julia Child had an interesting way of making the tomato sauce for her lasagna: She began by sauteing onions and two cups of freshly diced and deseeded tomatoes, and supplemented that with a can of peeled Italian plum tomatoes. Before the latter could be added to the sauce, however, Child put them through a food mill to deseed. She had a reason for going this extra step: to her, canned, whole tomatoes were less sweet than the canned tomato purees of the day.

While this is great advice, her next steps wholly diverged from a lasagna you might recognize. Child gave viewers the approval to elevate lasagna into something akin to leftover casserole. From any remaining chicken in the fridge to mushrooms, cooked down spinach, or cottage cheese, Child showed that if it was in the fridge, it could be stacked between your pasta. Child was also candid in mentioning here that she had "no idea how the Italians do it." Call it an early instance of fusion cuisine, or not, we're at least grateful that Child specified using no.1 semolina durum wheat lasagna noodles. Buon apetitto.