Before she was the woman who taught America how to poach an egg without panicking, Julia Child was a spy. Well, technically she was a researcher for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA. But "spy" sounds way cooler.
Most people know her for the butter. The wine. The booming voice. But in 1943, she wasn’t "The French Chef." She was Julia McWilliams, a 31-year-old from Pasadena who was too tall for the Navy WAVES—she was 6'2"—and ended up working for the Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section (ERE).
It was here that she helped cook up her first famous recipe: julia child shark repellent.
Honestly, the military had a massive PR problem. Sailors were terrified of being eaten alive after their ships went down. To make matters worse, sharks were actually bumping into underwater explosives meant for Nazi U-boats and setting them off prematurely. The Navy needed a fix. They needed something to tell a shark to back off.
Cooking with Poisons
Julia didn't just wake up and decide to fight sharks. She worked as an executive assistant to Captain Harold J. Coolidge, a scientist from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. They were the "Shark Chaser" team.
The lab wasn't exactly a Michelin-star kitchen.
They tested over 100 different substances. We're talking about everything from horse urine and nicotine to cloves and common poisons. They even tried chemical warfare gases. Nothing really worked. Sharks are basically swimming stomachs with no manners, so they aren't easily offended.
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Eventually, they leaned into a theory that sharks might be repelled by the smell of their own dead. The team experimented with decayed shark meat. It was gross. It was smelly.
It was perfect.
The Secret Formula
The "recipe" they finally landed on wasn't exactly boeuf bourguignon. It was a mixture of:
- Copper acetate (the active repellent)
- Black nigrosine dye (to hide the human from the shark)
- Water-soluble wax (to hold it all together in a "cake")
Basically, it was a little black disk. You’d strap it to your life vest or your leg. When it hit the water, it dissolved and created a dark, stinky cloud that supposedly smelled like a rotting shark carcass.
Julia later joked that this was her first big recipe. She told an interviewer she mixed it in a bathtub. You can almost hear her laugh when she said it.
Did the Julia Child Shark Repellent Actually Work?
Here is the part where history gets a little murky.
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If you ask the CIA, they’ll tell you it was about 60% effective in bait tests. If you ask a marine biologist today, they’ll probably roll their eyes.
The Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics was skeptical even back then. In a 1943 memo, the chief noted that while the "cake" showed "slight repellence," it probably wouldn't do much against a "voracious" shark in a feeding frenzy.
It was largely a placebo.
A "pink pill," as some veterans called it.
But morale is a powerful thing. If you’re floating in the middle of the Pacific, knowing you have a "Shark Chaser" on your belt makes you feel a lot better than knowing you’re just a snack in a life jacket. It gave men the courage to stay calm, which is arguably more important for survival than the actual chemicals.
Life After the OSS
The military kept issuing this repellent until the 1970s. There are even rumors that NASA used a version of the julia child shark repellent to protect space capsules after they splashed down in the ocean. Julia herself believed this, though the paperwork is a bit thin.
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By the time the recipe was being phased out, Julia had moved on to bigger things. Like butter. Lots of it.
She moved to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and then China with the OSS. That’s where she met Paul Child. He was a sophisticated artist and fellow OSS officer who introduced her to the world of fine dining. Without the OSS, we probably never would have gotten the Julia Child we know today. No move to Paris. No Le Cordon Bleu. No "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."
It’s wild to think that the woman who revolutionized American dinner tables got her start trying to keep sharks from eating sailors.
Actionable Insights for History Buffs
If you're fascinated by Julia's secret life, here is how you can dig deeper into the real story:
- Read the Declassified Files: The CIA officially declassified Julia’s personnel records in 2008. You can actually read her performance reviews on the CIA’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) electronic reading room.
- Visit the Smithsonian: Her famous kitchen is at the National Museum of American History in DC, but keep an eye out for their exhibits on the OSS—they often feature her wartime contributions.
- Check out "Sisterhood of Spies": This book by Elizabeth McIntosh (a former OSS officer herself) features interviews with Julia where she talks about the "fun" they had developing the repellent.
The next time you see a shark on TV or smell something vaguely fishy in your kitchen, just remember Julia. She was fearless, whether she was facing a 10-foot Great White or a falling soufflé.