This is Mrs. Raffald’s recipe. Mrs. Raffald was one of our most famous English cooks. She was a Miss Whittaker of Doncaster, and trained as a housekeeper; ‘but finding servants generally so ignorant in dressing meat, and a good cook so hard to be met with, put me upon studying the art of cookery more than perhaps I otherwise should have done. Always endeavouring to join economy with neatness and elegance, being sensible what valuable qualifications these are in a housekeeper or cook; for what use is their skill if they put their master or lady to an immoderate expense in dressing a dinner for a small company, when at the same time a prudent manager would have dressed twice the number of dishes for a much greater Company, at half the cost?’ Her last situation was as housekeeper to the Lady Elizabeth Warburton of Arley Hall, Cheshire, eldest daughter to the 11th Earl of Derby. Miss Whittaker married the head gardener, Mr. Raffald, and went with her husband to live in Manchester where he joined his brothers in a florist and seedsman’s stall in the market place whilst his wife took a confectioner’s shop at the corner of Old Exchange Alley. There she received pupils, the daughters of the principal local families who paid well for the privilege. They worked in the kitchen of the establishment and received lessons in cooking and confectionery, etc. They were taught how to pluck poultry, skin hares, etc., no less than to cook them afterwards, and to carve them when placed on the table. These particulars are taken from the Manchester Collectanea, vol. ii, Chetham Society, 1862, and the editor says: ‘The influence she exercised in her own day, in securing attention to the duties of a good housewife, and in including the culinary art amongst the homely and useful accomplishments of the young ladies of an extensive district, it is scarcely possible to overrate.’ She was an enterprising woman at any rate. She superintended arrangements for public and private dinners and was celebrated for these achievements. She took the Bull’s Head Inn in the market place and ran that so well that the officers of the regiments stationed at Manchester had their mess table at the Bull’s Head, and on her removal to the King’s Head, Salford, the officers’ mess removed thither also.
