November 13, 2025
Elizabeth Raffald entered the history of gastronomy as a true revolutionary of 18th-century English cuisine. Through her book and her many enterprises, Raffald managed to serve both the upper classes and the growing middle-class households — and in doing so, she permanently reshaped English gastronomy.
A pioneering culinary businesswoman
Elizabeth Raffald began her career in the kitchen of an aristocratic household, first as a maid, later as a housekeeper, where she learned the art of running a large domestic staff and kitchen. There she met her future husband, and after their marriage, she launched her own entrepreneurial career — initially under her husband’s business and name.
She opened an agency that, for a fee, matched domestic servants with employers, and in her advertisement she announced to the world that she was “happy to supply cold dishes, hot French dishes, sweets, etc.” — essentially offering an early form of catering service. Over the next few years her business grew, and she soon added cooking lessons to her services.
In August 1766, the Raffalds moved to a larger premises where, according to her newspaper advertisements, she sold “jellies, creams, possets, flummery, lemon cheesecakes and every other decoration for cold dishes, as well as Yorkshire hams, tongues, brawn, Newcastle salmon and sturgeon, all sorts of pickles and ketchups, and lemon pickles.” She also provided and organized private dinners.
By the following year, alongside her confectionery products, she was selling “pistachios, French olives, Portuguese and French plums, prunellos, limes, preserved pineapples, and every sort of sweetmeat, both foreign and English manufacture. Also Turkish figs and other raisins, Jordan and Valencia almonds, truffles, morels, and all kinds of spices.”
The cookbook that became a classic
In 1769, her first and most famous book, The Experienced English Housekeeper, was published — a work that described recipes in unprecedented detail. For example, in her recipe for stewed mutton she specified how to cut the meat, how long to cook it, the intensity of the fire, and even the exact order in which vegetables should be placed beneath the meat.
Written, as she put it, “entirely from practice,” the book contained nearly 800 original recipes. Unlike many of the lofty and overly ornate cookbooks of her time, Raffald’s offered clear, practical guidance that ordinary housewives could follow to run their kitchens efficiently and intelligently.
The book was a huge success: it was reprinted six times during Raffald’s lifetime. She appreciated its success but called the work a “fatiguing undertaking” that had harmed her health because she was “too industrious and paid too much attention to it.”
The second edition included “an appendix with more than one hundred approved recipes for cooking, confectionery, pickling, and preserving.” The eighth edition — published posthumously — was the first to include the author’s portrait. In total, there were thirteen official editions, along with many pirated copies, a testament to the book’s lasting popularity.
A lasting culinary legacy
For the first edition of The Experienced English Housekeeper, Raffald personally tested every recipe. Historians note that her recipes appealed particularly to the middle class — dishes such as “minced veal shank, hot chicken pie and carrot pudding, poached eggs on toast, macaroni with Parmesan, and lettuce stewed with mint” became well known from her book.
She was very much a product of her time: she avoided garlic, preferred her vegetables crisp, and used grated horseradish and cayenne pepper as seasonings.
Unlike many contemporary cookbooks, The Experienced English Housekeeper contained only recipes for food and drink — no medicines or perfumes. It offered a single page of guidelines on table setting but none on how servants should behave. Over a third of her recipes were devoted to confectionery, including one of the earliest known versions of Burnt Cream (now known as crème brûlée), detailed instructions for shaping sugar into baskets, and elaborate multi-layered jellies such as “a fish made of flummery” or “a bird’s nest of candied lemon peel.”
Historians believe Raffald’s strength lay in her imagination, visible in creations such as “a transparent pudding covered with a silver net.” Some recipes, however, do seem eccentric — for example, the “Surprise Rabbit,” in which the cook “draws out the jawbones after roasting and sticks them in the eyes to resemble horns.”
Raffald’s culinary legacy is considerable: she was the first to record a recipe for crumpets (the ancestor of the American pancake), made early references to barbecue, and was ahead of her time in recommending the use of wine in cooking. She also played a key role in the evolution of the wedding cake, creating the first recipe for Bride Cake, regarded as the forerunner of today’s traditional wedding cakes. Her version differed from earlier ones by being covered in sugar icing, making it distinctly more festive.
Many modern chefs and food writers have admired Raffald. The 20th-century culinary author Elizabeth David frequently cited her, publishing versions of Raffald’s apricot ice cream, crumpet, barm pudding, “wegg” (a caraway seed cake), and Bath buns. Jane Grigson included five of Raffald’s recipes in her English Food: bacon and egg pie (topped with quiche pastry), “whet” (anchovy fillet and cheese on toast), chicken and ham pâté, crème brûlée, and orange pudding.
Raffald’s legacy lives on today — and the next time you encounter any of these dishes, remember the remarkable, forward-thinking businesswoman who helped shape English cuisine as we know it.
