Top-selling Spanish cookbook author Simone Ortega dead at 89

AFP, July, 2008

MADRID (AFP) — Top-selling Spanish cookbook author and chef Simone Ortega, who won top culinary awards in both France and Spain, has died, her publisher said Wednesday. She was 89.

Publishing company Alianza Editorial said Ortega died overnight at a nursing home in Madrid. It did not know the cause of her death.

Her first book "1,080 Recetas de Cocina", or 1,080 recipes, has gone through 49 printings and sold over three million copies since it was published in 1972.

It remains her most successful book in terms of sales and is the only one which is available in English.

Born in Spain's northeastern Catalonia region to a family originally from Alsace in France, the French government in 2006 bestowed her with the Order of Arts and Letters at a special...