Europe 1 7:38 p.m., September 25, 2021

Françoise Bernard, who became an icon of French family cooking with her best-seller "Easy Recipes", died on Sunday, September 19 at the age of 100.

In the program "La Table des bons vivant", Laurent Mariotte and his columnists paid tribute to the author, a true reference in the world of home cooking.

She was a pioneer of cooking show hosts.

Françoise Bernard, the best-selling author of simple and effective cooking died last Sunday at the age of 100, announced the Hachette publishing house.

The program "La Table des bons vivants" paid tribute to the one who revolutionized French family cooking. 

"I was not a great cook"

Many French people own his book "Easy Recipes" released in 1965 and republished several times by Hachette.

But nothing predestined Françoise Bernard, née Andrée Jonquoy, for a dazzling career in the world of cooking. 

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Secretary at Unilever, she sold margarine and edible oils, until the day when her company decided to create in 1946 the name of Françoise Bernard, born from the association of the two most frequent first names of the 1950s. The idea was to make the character of Françoise Bernard their specialist in "cooking advice" when she had no training as a cook, as she explained to Laurent Mariotte in 2016. "I was not a great cook, I was a young woman who wanted to learn to cook and who did not speak the language of the textbooks. To learn, I was in the hands of the cooks. I acquired very quickly, but knowledge comes when you want and when you are obliged to do ".

Simple, clear cuisine, without jargon

Andrée Jonquoy takes on the role of Françoise Bernard for 25 years.

Until I could no longer leave him.

"I played Françoise Bernard for so long that it became my name," she explained. 

"For me, this is the first cookbook", recalls Yves Camdeborde, chef and columnist on the show "La Table des bons vivant".

Many listeners from Europe 1 have also paid tribute to Françoise Bernard like Nathalie who writes on Facebook, "I am still consulting the book I received at my wedding in 1986!" 

Pioneer in temperature and time indications

Françoise Bernard said that she was addressing "moderately sassy" women in the kitchen, who work, have children and little time to waste to feed them.

"I wanted to take them by the hand so that they learn, like me, cooking by doing it," she explained.

She was also the pioneer of precise indications on how to make recipes, especially temperatures and times, which was not done at the time.