LE CORDON BLEU AT HOME

LE CORDON BLEU AT HOME (Hearst Books, $37.50) Julia Child learned French cooking at the famous Cordon Bleu school in Paris, then came home to instruct the rest of us in the technique sans the forbidding mystique. Now, 30 years and numerous French cookbooks later, we have the school's own one-volume ''complete course.'' No mere recipe collection, the 90 lessons here come in the form of three-course menus that include both beginning sauces and such advanced spectacles as the whole flounder that you skin, bone, stuff with salmon mousseline, and surround with puff-pastry cups containing an oyster- spinach filling. All in all, both the book's format and its contents call for commitment. Before you make it, consider that the 90 meals for six you're taking on will enrich you and your five dining companions by a collective total of 105 pounds of butter, 642 eggs, 94 cups of heavy cream, and 110 cups of milk. Then there's the cheese and bacon. B -Sada Fretz