The Complete Elizabeth Raffald

Book excerpt: Elizabeth Raffald was an amazing woman, achieving a great many things in a short time. She was an author, innovator, benefactor and entrepreneur as well as a mother and a wife. From the age of 15 she was in service as a housekeeper to great families and at the age of 30 began her career in business. She began with catering, included a school and employment office before writing this cookbook which contains her own original, innovative recipes, giving us wedding cake, stock cubes, Eccles cakes and much more that we take for granted. She gained a huge reputation for her confectionery skills, while running shops and a coaching inn, giving financial aid to the only newspaper in Manchester at the time, producing the town's first ever directory in 1772, (only the second after London), supporting several poor widows of the area, collaborating on a book of midwifery, and having 9 children.