Pen & Sword Books
Release Date: February 28, 2023
Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚
Synopsis: The great Elizabeth Raffald used to be a household name, and her list of accomplishments would make even the highest of achievers feel suddenly impotent. After becoming housekeeper at Arley Hall in Cheshire at age twenty-five, she married and moved to Manchester, transforming the Manchester food scene and business community, writing the first A to Z directory and creating the first domestic servants registry office, the first temping agency if you will. Not only that, she set up a cookery school and ran a high class tavern attracting both gentry and nobility.
These achievements gave her notoriety and standing in Manchester, but it all pales in comparison to her biggest achievement; her cookery book The Experienced English Housekeeper. Published in 1769, it ran to over twenty editions and brought her fame and fortune.But then disaster; her fortune lost, spent by her alcoholic husband. Bankrupted twice, she spent her final years in a pokey coffeehouse in a seedy part of town.
Her book, however, lived on. Influential and often imitated (but never bettered), it became the must-have volume for any kitchen, and it helped form our notion of traditional British food as we think of it today.
To tell Elizabeth’s tumultuous rise and fall story, historian Neil Buttery doesn’t just delve into the history of food in the eighteenth century, he has to look at trade and empire, domestic service, the agricultural revolution, women’s rights, publishing and copyright law, gentlemen’s clubs and societies, the horse races, the defeminization of midwifery, and the paranormal, to name but a few.
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Before Mrs. Beeton, there was Elizabeth Raffald, a one woman powerhouse who worked hard to become an incredible success, and deserves to be far more well known than she is today. Elizabeth began as a servant, worked her way up to (a surprisingly young) housekeeper, and after marrying John Raffald moved to Manchester where she had a confectioner's shop, catered fine meals, built a servant's hiring agency, wrote a best-selling cookery book based on the idea that the developing middle-class and servants (housekeepers etc.) wanted to know the best ways to economically cook excellent meals, plain meals, fancy desserts, and everything in between.
This book does a really great job of giving the reader a good feel for where Elizabeth is historically and socially- she works to build up her social status and wealth without ever shocking the society around her. She plays by the rules, but she has a brilliant sense for business opportunities and timing that allow her to become an incredibly influential woman in Manchester, and author Neil Buttery argues, brings Manchester up with her. There is excellent additional research on life in eighteenth century England at different levels of society, the changes England's global empire were making back home, wonderful information on what it was like being a servant in these changing times when so many were leaving the country for city life, fascinating food history, and more. We get to see some of Elizabeth's recipes with modern adjustments in case anyone is adventurous enough to try them at home, and more.
As people once again become interested in food history and the people connected to making important contributions to national food as we might still know it today, Elizabeth Raffald will surely become a more known and celebrated name. This well-written and well-researched book will hopefully help to play a part in getting the word out. I'm certainly glad I found it!!
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
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