The nation’s true master chef, Margaret Fulton may teach ordinary Aussies their way around the kitchen but the straight-talking businesswoman is far from the traditional housewife. She grants an audience to Michael Romei.

Margaret Fulton (Image: K Marks)

In 1968, the feminist movement was in full swing. Women had thrown off the shackles of domesticity and were marching the streets, burning a bra or five, and loudly calling for equal status with men. But in Australia, as acid-tongued Germaine Greer was preparing to pen her treatise The Female Eunuch, there was one fiercely independent woman who’d never got the memo that kitchens were out and slacks were in.

“I never considered myself a feminist,” says Margaret Fulton, 85, whose legendary self-titled cookbook was released that year and forever changed the food landscape in Australia. “If you’re brought up in a family where you have equal voice with everyone, and you’re accustomed to speaking your mind, you don’t think of being a feminist. If I wanted to get rid of a husband I got rid of a husband. So what is there to be a feminist about?”

That is typical Fulton. Eminently quotable, and endlessly fascinating – a firecracker of a woman with a wit as sharp as the kitchen knives she has used to build her legacy. Not that you could tell his simply by looking at her. This cardigan-carting, serenely spoken “old granny” is as deceptively complex as a poached egg, with a self confidence that is as admirable as it is disarming.

“Germaine Greer did things differently to me,” says the doyenne of culinary delights from her majestically located home on Sydney Harbour. “She told women to get empowered, while I always felt you can be empowered in the kitchen. It’s a place where people can look after themselves, cook for themselves and show independence.”

Indeed, while many claimed cooking was past its use-by date, Fulton thought otherwise. In the years following World War II, waves of migrants arrived in Australia, bringing with them a bevy of foreign cuisines that were the envy of almost every local. Coupled with the new produce that was emerging and the fact people were beginning to travel, Fulton – along with British publishing magnate Paul Hamlyn – smelt the ingredients for success. It was simply a matter of whipping up a recipe.

“I remember asking the editor what market I should write for,” Fulton reflects. “And he said, ‘Look Margaret, we find that when a person writes a book for themselves, if it’s going to be a success it will be a big success’. So that’s what I did – I wrote a book that I knew my daughter could cook from if I wasn’t there, a book that had food my father would enjoy, and a book that would appeal to people’s adventurous side, so I included international food as well. And then I thought, well, I’ve got to have something for myself, and I put in an entertaining section too.”

With its accessible language, lush images and groundbreaking content, The Margaret Fulton Cookbook became a household staple, selling 1.5 million copies and undergoing 19 reprints. Suddenly, people knew what to do with chopsticks, how to eat a slice of pizza and that spaghetti didn’t just come out of a can. Women from Sydney to Perth were hosting glamourous dinner parties – none of which were complete without Fulton’s French onion soup and beef Wellingtons – as Fulton became the toast of the nation.

But deep down, wasn’t there a small part of Fulton that thought ordinary Australians might be wary of such creative cooking?

“I wasn’t worried about it,” she says firmly. “I knew people might be afraid at first, but it was a learning curb. And Australians are a lot better than a lot of other nationalities when it comes to trying different things. It was the fun of it.”

“I often think that I was like Mr Toad going on a wild ride and [Australian women] came with me. I did the maddest things, and women loved it, they loved doing something that was a bit crazy and different. And I also gave the feeling that food was fun. And doing it was fun, so let’s be in it.”

Not that Fulton always saw her future in food. Brought up in a country town within a Scottish family of six, she says that despite having a mother who was a spectacular cook, most of her skills were acquired – to both hers and her family’s regret – in the school classroom.

“In those days teachers thought anything to do with the domestic scene was really almost beneath them,” she remembers crossly. “They thought you can learn to cook in six lessons, but I don’t think you can do that. It’s a long, slow process. Like carpentry or plumbing or anything. You’ve got to get the skills and understand everything.”

“They weren’t convinced that cooking was important, so if your food was hard as a lump of lead and you could use it as a doorstep, they didn’t care. I learnt how not to do things at school.”

After this experience, she was understandable wary of food, revealing with a wicked grin that she always wanted to move to Paris and become a can-can dancer. But reality (she was too short) and the desire for money quickly relegated this dream.

“Someone once said to me that after the war there were going to be three things for women to make good money from, and they were cosmetics, energy and food advertising. I was told that by the time I reached 30 I’d be earning £30 a week, and I thought, that’s what I want! Real money!”

With that goal in mind, Fulton set about becoming one of Australia’s pioneer business women. By entering the world of advertising she quickly found herself working on a number of big-name accounts such as Kelloggs and Kraft, but admits it was a struggle working in a man’s world. Despite proving herself time and time again, Fulton says her male colleagues would often laugh and question her ability to work at the highest level.

“So basically cooking became easy after all the business experience,” she says.

After enrolling in a classical cooking course – learning from the best European chefs – and landing a job teaching people to cook at the Australian Gas Light Company, Fulton began the culinary career that was to span more than 40 years, produce 24 books, and generate four million sales. It is one that is unlikely to have been so successful had it not been for her firm belief in the importance of food as something to be shared rather than simply as something to be eaten.

“It’s not so much the food itself that excites me, but the sharing. So having nice food, or even the simplest food like bread and cheese and a glass of wine with good company, is as good as a five-star restaurant meal. I don’t think food should be separated from people. It’s all part of living, and it’s all part of living a rounded life,” she says.

“Mealtimes in our house were absolutely great, because you’d sit around enjoying nice food and talking to one another. It seems to be the joining force. You know how they have these scientific illustrations of genes and how they all link up. In our lives, I believe those linking cells are, in fact, food. And being able to eat it and enjoy it. It’s what keeps us going, it’s what makes us feel happy.”

One of the most fascinating aspects of Fulton is that while many believed she represented the virtues present in the home, she was far from the perfect housewife – at least in the conventional sense. With three husbands and reported extra-martial affairs (from both parties), marriage was one recipe Fulton couldn’t quite master.

“People have said to me over the years ‘oh, isn’t it ironic you’ve had more than one husband, you haven’t gone through life as the perfect housewife’. But I think I am the perfect housewife. Some people might call what I went through rocky, but I call it life,” she says.

“Personal lives go astray, you know. I’m human. I went for men that were flashy, and amusing. But they were amusing to other women also. They wanted me plus all the adulation from other people as well. I just couldn’t take the marriage business all that seriously. And people aren’t doing it that much anymore. I was just one of the early ones.”

But despite the dramas, Fulton still managed to enshrine herself as Australia’s first celebrity chef – a current global phenomenon she has trouble coming to terms with. Indeed, there are precious few celebrity chefs who aren’t in Fulton’s firing line.

“They’re only entertainment, they’re not seriously cooking,” she notes with distaste. “Too many of them don’t know what they’re on about.”

“Nigella [Lawson] acts like a simpering idiot. But she is basically a highly intelligent women, and I would like to see more of her intelligence show. She used to judge the Booker Prize, her father was the Chancellor of the Exchequer… She’s no simpering, sweet, cushy thing. And yet why is she doing it?”

“I mean it’s ridiculous. I know men adore her and I can understand it, but if you want a simpleton… and who wants one of those?”

And Gordon Ramsay? “Oh, he’s horrid”. Enough said.

“Somebody said that I taught Australians how to cook. But I think I taught them how to cook properly,” she says proudly.

Perhaps it’s a concern for the cooking practices being propagated today, but Fulton has no plans to retire. A few years ago she underwent quadruple bypass surgery but she is still as active – and independent – as ever, crusading against genetically modified foods, supporting Greenpeace and doing yoga twice a week.

As for those who dismissed her book – including feminist crusader Greer – Fulton points out with some relish the delicious irony that exists today. “I sold as many books as Germaine Greer did, and she was saying ‘why am I up here with a cookery book?’. But you know, now Germaine is photographed in her kitchen with her latest bread that she proudly made…”

“I mean, sex is good but if it’s not around, cooking is better.”