First American Edition
The Experienced English Housekeeper: for the Use and Ease of Ladies, Housekeepers, Cooks, &c.
Philadelphia: Printed for Thomas Dobson, at the Stone House, no. 41 South Second Street; by John Bioren, 1801.
Price: $3,000.00
About the item
First American Edition. 3 engraved folding plates. [4], iii, [1], 327, [1], [12]pp. 8vo. Contemporary tree sheep, minor wear. Foxing and browning as usual. Shaw 1211; Lowenstein 29.
Item #352280
Elizabeth Raffald spent fifteen years as housekeeper to Lady Elizabeth Warburton before she opened a confectioner's shop in Manchester and set up a cookery school. She went on to have fifteen daughters, run two inns, found Salford's first newspaper, establish a registry office for servants and compile Manchester's first Directory. Her Experienced English Housekeeper was first published in 1769 and nearly thirty editions or piracies followed before 1800.
The book contains some 900 recipes, consisting almost entirely of instructions based on Raffald's own experience rather than plagiarizing from other sources. Among several recipes of note were the first known recipe for a wedding cake covered in marzipan and royal icing, an early reference to barbecue and a very early recipe for macaroni and cheese.
This first American edition is particularly scarce on the market with no complete example in the auction records. OCLC locates but 3 institutional holdings (AAS, NYU, Temple), with an additional located at the Library Company.
