Margaret Fulton, the author of popular Australian cookbooks, has died aged 94.
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Fulton was the UK-born author of many popular cookbooks and guest on several cooking TV shows.
Her family were "mourning the loss of their loving, inspirational and treasured mother, grandmother and great-grandmother", they said in a statement.
She was one of Australia's best-known food writers and a beloved national figure.
Her list of honours include a "National Living Treasure" from the National Trust and an OAM in 1983.
During her career she wrote more than 20 cookbooks and was most well known for her eponymous The Margaret Fulton Cookbook published in 1968.
Undoubtedly Australia's most loved and celebrated cookery writer, Fulton transformed our national cuisine and taught generations of Australians how to cook no-nonsense, wholesome food through her magazine columns in the 1960s and '70s, and later through her cookbooks (The Margaret Fulton Cookbook was the first of her 20 books, selling 1.5 million copies with 19 reprints).
Believing she would never end up a cook, the Scottish-born Fulton entered the man's world of food advertising and then became the food editor of Woman's Day in 1960.
She said she had realised that women were bored stiff with their cooking so she wrote The Margaret Fulton Cookbook, which was published in 1968.
"When I started I was considered sort of crazy. Cooking was the last thing women wanted then; they wanted red lipstick and seamless stockings. I had no competition at all [with the first book]. I was showing women how to do something different."
A food historian and professor of creative industries at Central Queensland University in Rockhampton, Professor Donna Brien, once described the much-loved Australian cooking matriarch as being as much an activist as any of the high-profile food writers today.
Writing in the 1950s and 1960s, Ms Fulton also pushed a food agenda that we would see as highly political now, albeit in very different language, Ms Brien says.
Fulton argued for buying fresh produce, supporting local purveyors and butchers and frugal cooking that makes thrifty use of leftovers. And she was a champion of families sitting down and eating meals together all issues very much on the foodie agenda today.
She says in the 1970s, Ms Fulton's activism showed in a different way, when she published cookbooks focused on cooking quickly and using convenience foods supporting women moving into the workforce.
''She's always been a real champion of women having roles outside the home,'' Ms Brien says.
''And that's another political angle that isn't often seen.''
The women's magazines that published Ms Fulton and other female food writers had an enormous reach, read in almost every Australian home, Ms Brien says, comparing their influence to the reach of shows like MasterChef today.
She said Ms Fulton was an activist pushing for change.
''We often look at publications from '50s, '60s and '70s and because we nostalgically see their design as dated, cute or even a little corny, it's hard to see beyond the way they're presented to see they're actually fairly cutting-edge. They are actually very clever in being able to market a mass message in a very gentle way that does move people to change.''