The Experienced English Housekeeper, For the Use and Ease of Ladies, Housekeepers, Cooks, &c. Written Purely From Practice, and Dedicated to the Hon. Lady Elizabeth Warburton, Whom the Author Lately Served as Housekeeper: Consisting of Near Nine Hundred Original Receipts, Most of Which Never Appeared in Print.

RAFFALD, Elizabeth.

$350.00

Item Number: 146407

London: Printed for R. Baldwin, 1782.

Early edition of this instruction guide to housekeeping, with nearly nine hundred recipes. Octavo, bound in three quarter reverse calf over marbled boards, frontispiece portrait of Elizabeth Raffald, illustrated with three folding plates with setting plans for a grand table and a diagram of the newly invented fire stove, “wherein any common fuel may be burnt instead of charcoal.” In very good condition, some toning throughout, and contemporary manuscript notations to the front free endpaper and title page.

Elizabeth Raffald was an English author, innovator and entrepreneur who ran a cookery school and published two works: one a book of recipes and the other a directory of "proper and intelligent persons" in Manchester. Her book 'The Experienced English Housekeeper' contains the first recipe for a "Bride Cake" that is recognizable as a modern wedding cake.