By the time Julia and Paul Child left the United States for Paris in the late 1940s, a couple of cooks were already beginning to establish themselves as television celebrities in America. I Love to Eat, which appeared on NBC starting in 1946, featured James Beard, an actor turned caterer and cookbook author; To the Queen’s Taste, which debuted on CBS in 1948, starred Dione Lucas and was broadcast from her New York restaurant, the Egg Basket. But both Lucas and Beard had one problem so far as the viewing public was concerned: Both were not only professional cooks but