“She wasn’t just a cook. She was a journalist and entrepreneur.”

The food historian Barbara Santich, who worked with Margaret Fulton in the mid-1970s,at Women’s Day, and again in the 80s, says the influence of the Australian cooking pioneer, who died on Wednesday, went far beyond her skills in the kitchen.

“She was an extraordinary communicator,” Santich says. “She knew how to talk to people through her writing.”

These days celebrity chefs and food commentators are a dime a dozen. But Fulton was the first. It was she who steered us away from meat and three veg, urging Australian housewives to be bold and try new things.

“She has guided generations through the kitchen,” Santich says.

She describes Fulton as “modest”, “meticulous” and “ethical”.

“She realised that she was recognised as an authority and she made sure she met those standards.” .

Born in Scotland in 1924, Fulton and moved to Australia with her family when she was three. She began her career as a cooking teacher and is often credited with introducing Australians to the pressure cooker, but it was her 1968 book The Margaret Fulton Cookbook that really put her on the map.

Looking at the book today, it’s hard not to giggle at the nostalgic recipes and photos. My 1974 edition contains imperial measurements and a helpful laminated “metric conversion guide”. Flipping through to the dessert section, I’m alarmed by a recipe for “orange sherbet”. The ingredients include oranges, gelatine, milk, salt, sugar and lemon juice.

Pages 126 and 127 shows a step-by-step guide of how to eat spaghetti, complete with black and white photos. There are also instructions for how to cook rice.

Santich explains that we must see the seminal book as a product of the time – and be clear about how revolutionary it was. Mixing familiar recipes with the unfamiliar was a stroke of genius, she says.

“In the 50s people from other countries started coming to Australia – there was a certain level of resistance to them and to their food. With Margaret introducing it and integrating it with what they [Australians] did know, it contributed to integrating those other cultures into Australia.”

Blake Singley has researched and written on the history of Australian cookbooks for almost a decade. He agrees Fulton changed the culture: “Margaret Fulton’s impact on the Australian culinary landscape cannot be overestimated … The Margaret Fulton Cookbook holds a special place in the hearts of many Australians who grew up in the 1970s and 80s – it brings back memories of family and home.”

He believes it wasn’t just overseas arrivals who shifted our culinary interests. We were also travelling ourselves.

“By the late 1960s, Australia had become much more outward-looking, an increasing number of Australians had travelled overseas and had brought back culinary memories of their travels,” he says. “They were eager to reproduce some of these in their own kitchen and Fulton’s book gave them an opportunity to do so …

“Her recipes were straightforward, easy to follow and usually foolproof. The book catered for those with little experience in the kitchen as well as for those wishing to expand on their culinary expertise.”

When 68-year-old Vicki Hingston-Jones bought the book in the 70s she was a young army officer’s wife and dinner parties were “compulsory and competitive – four courses at least, with a different wine for each course”.

Hingston-Jones used the book daily – her copy is covered with cooking spatters to prove it. She has cooked Fulton’s rich Christmas pudding “every single year since 1974, increasing its size as my family grew”. She also whipped up the mustard-coated spare ribs often when the family was “stony broke and ribs were cheap and almost considered waste”.

By 1978 the cookbook had sold 670,000 copies – eight times as many as the previously bestselling Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union Cookbook. Her Encyclopaedia of Food and Cookery came out in 1983, the same year Fulton was awarded the medal of the Order of Australia.

By today’s standards, many of the colour photos with their yellowish hues and artlessly displayed meals look far from appetising. But Santich stresses they have to be understood in the context of the times.

“I think with the colour photography [of] food, Australia was leading the way worldwide,” she says. Before Fulton’s 1968 classic was released, cookbooks were mainly text “and if they did have photos, they were black and white”.

Fulton always had firm ideas of what she wanted, brought in all the props and directed all the photoshoots, she says.

Colour images “helped people see something as it would appear on the table, so that you could see … the way the colours work together”, Santich says.

Despite the many international cuisines that influenced Fulton’s recipes, her Scottish heritage stayed with her. Santich recalls Fulton’s passion for Dundee cake – a traditional fruitcake with a lemon twist.

“There wasn’t a year when Dundee cake didn’t appear in Women’s Day in one context or another … That’s something that I always associate with her.”

• Ginger Gorman is an award-winning print and radio journalist