Fifty years ago this week, a program debuted on a public television station in Boston that revolutionized home cooking.

“The French Chef,” the brainchild of California-born and French-trained culinarian Julia Child, was audacious in its timing.

In an era when American housewives were being offered “liberation” from cooking in the form of frozen meals, packaged cake mixes and dump-cuisine recipes in ladies magazines featuring Jell-O, Spam and food coloring, here came Child insisting that anyone could master classic French recipes. “Don’t be afraid!” was her motto.