If you're afraid of butter, use cream.

Julia Child’s quip is a characteristically mischievous jab at culinary timidity—especially modern anxieties about fat. On its face it offers a “compromise” for people who fear butter, but the joke is that cream is simply butter’s close cousin: richer, not safer. The line therefore functions as a manifesto for Child’s broader approach to cooking: embrace flavor, technique, and pleasure rather than moralizing ingredients. It also punctures the illusion that small substitutions meaningfully change the indulgent nature of a dish, urging cooks to be honest about what they want and to cook with confidence rather than guilt.