Julia Child went over a lot of potential titles before she landed on 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking.'

After a ten year process, famed chef and PBS pioneer, Julia Child, was ready to publish the cookbook she and her two partners, Simca Beck and Louisette Bertholle, had arduously compiled. 

In a letter to her editor Judith Jones, Child proposes a list of potential titles for the cookbook, including the ever-catchy Cooking Is My Hobby or the scintillating Food from France.

Things take a sexy turn when Child proposes Cooking for Love or, alternatively, The Passionate French Cook.

These copies of the letter Child sent to Jones from The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin show Child's complete list of potential titles, including the penciled in title which would ultimately be selected.

Julia Child Materials © 2012, The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts. From the Harry Ransom Center's Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. records.

Julia Child Materials © 2012, The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts. From the Harry Ransom Center's Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. records.

Alfred A Knopf, head of the publishing company, famously said about the potential title of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, "I'll eat my hat if that title sells."

As mentioned on the Julia Child page at the University of Texas, by 1974 Julia Child's cookbook sold 1.4 million copies with that title.

Somewhere, a hat died.