PLASCASSIER, France — When I hefted the rolling pin in my hand, I finally felt it: a thread of energy, a thrill of recognition. I knew I was standing in Julia Child’s kitchen, and I was about to put it to work.

In August, having rented it from the current owners through Airbnb, I spent a week living and cooking in La Pitchoune, the house in Provence that Mrs. Child and her husband, Paul, built in 1965 and lived in on and off until 1992.

In advance, I worried that the house would have been remodeled and glossed over in the intervening years until nothing of her was left; but as her namesake, I hoped that the kitchen would be a place where her spirit, if not her spatulas, would remain. I planned my cooking around the second volume of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” most of which was produced here between 1965 and 1970.

La Pitchoune is in the hills that rise above the Côte d’Azur, 10 miles north of Cannes, though it feels far from the yachts, crowds and burkini battles of the Riviera. The Childs were drawn to Provence for more elemental reasons: sun, olives, figs, wine.