A judicial source said the woman was arrested on May 22 in the northern French town of Longwy, describing her as "the female Hannibal Lecter", after the fictional cannibal in thriller "The Silence of the Lambs".
The woman killed her 80-year-old husband with a kitchen mortar she used for grinding spices then "cooked his heart, nose and genital organs in a pot but we don't know if she ate them," the source said.
Her lawyer, Caroline Depretz, said the woman suffered from delusions. "Obviously it was a fit of madness," she said.