ELIZABETH RAFFALD
– Finally Rescued From Oblivion By Margaret Brecknell
married three years later, following which they moved to Manchester. The rules of the house at Arley Hall did not permit married servants to work there. Elizabeth was already 30 years of age by the time she arrived with her husband in Manchester, but she does not appear to have been fazed in the least by the prospect of having to start afresh. Soon after arriving in Manchester, she opened an outside catering business, followed by a confectioner’s shop, which was initially situated on Fennel Street, close to Manchester Cathedral. Contrary to what the name may suggest today, an 18thcentury confectionery business traded in far more than just sweets. When the business moved to new premises in 1766, the following advertisement, which Elizabeth placed in the Manchester Mercury, indicates the range of different products on sale in the shop, “Elizabeth Raffald begs leave to acquaint her friends and the public that she has opened a shop near the Bull’s Head in the Market Place, with a large assortment of confectionery goods, as good and as cheap as in London. Where may be had, jellies, creams, possets, lemon cheesecakes…also, Yorkshire hams, tongues, brawn, Newcastle salmon and sturgeon, pickles and ketchups of all kinds, a fine portable soup for travellers, coffee, tea and chocolate”. The advertisement also reveals that by this time Elizabeth had already expanded her business activities to include a celebration cake-making business and a “Register Office”, an 18th-century version of today’s recruitment agencies which focused on providing domestic staff to potential employers. She is also known to have run cookery classes for the daughters of well-to-do local families from the back of the shop.
Elizabeth Raffald’s 1769 book, The Experienced English Housekeeper, is recognised by modern food historians as being among the very first cookery books. However, this is only one of this remarkable woman’s many achievements. One of Manchester’s first female entrepreneurs, she ran a variety of different businesses, as well as being responsible for creating the area’s first ever trade directory.
In 1769 Elizabeth published the book, The Experienced English Housekeeper, for which she is best remembered today. Dedicated to her former employer, Lady Warburton, this comprehensive work contained nearly 800 original recipes, which, according to an early advertisement, had “never before appeared in print”. The book is divided into three parts, of which the first relates to savoury dishes, the second section desserts and confectionery and the third section preserves, pickles and vinegars.
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Drawing on her own experience of producing celebration cakes, the book includes Elizabeth’s personal recipe for “bride cake”, which is regarded as the forerunner of today’s wedding cake. She was the first to suggest decorating the cake with royal icing and almond paste, a method which is still often used for celebration cakes today. Other notable “firsts” in the book include recipes for “Burnt Cream” (better known today as crème brulée), Eccles cakes, crumpets and even piccalilli. All are Elizabeth’s own creations.
lizabeth was born in Yorkshire in July 1733, the daughter of a Doncaster schoolteacher called Joshua Whitaker. By the age of 15 she had entered domestic service and after more than a decade of hard graft at houses in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, she took on the prestigious role of housekeeper to the Warburton family at Arley Hall in Cheshire. Here she met John Raffald from Stockport, who was working as the head gardener. The couple were 202
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