Cookbook author Margaret Fulton has died aged 94.

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."

Tributes are flowing on Twitter from cooking identities and home cooks.

More to come