The Compleat Housewife
Frontispiece and Title Page of 14th Edition, 1750
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| Author | Eliza Smith |
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| Country | England |
| Subject | English cooking |
| Genre | Cookery |
| Publisher | J. Pemberton |
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Publication date
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1727 |
The Compleat Housewife, or, Accomplish'd Gentlewoman's Companion is a cookery book written by Eliza Smith and first published in London in 1727. It became extremely popular, running through 18 editions in fifty years.
It was the first cookery book to be published in the Thirteen Colonies of America: it was printed in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1742. It contained the first published recipe for "katchup", and appears to be the earliest source for bread and butter pudding.
The book includes recipes not only for foods but for wines, cordial-waters, medicines and salves.
The title page describes The Compleat Housewife as a
collection of several hundred of the most approved receipts, in cookery, pastry, confectionery, preserving, pickles, cakes, creams, jellies, made wines, cordials. And also bills of fare for every month of the year. To which is added, a collection of nearly two hundred family receipts of medicines; viz. drinks, syrups, salves, ointments, and many other things of sovereign and approved efficacy in most distempers, pains, aches, wounds, sores, etc. never before made publick in these parts; fit either for private families, or such publick-spirited gentlewomen as would be beneficent to their poor neighbours.
The book was the first to publish a recipe for "Katchup"; it included mushrooms, anchovies and horseradish. The title The Compleat Housewife may owe something to Gervase Markham's 1615 The English Huswife.
Little is known of Smith beyond what she writes of herself in the preface. She spent her life working as a cook or housekeeper in wealthy households, and unlike Elizabeth Raffald who left service to run her own shop, continued in that profession despite the success of her book. It is possible that she worked at Beaulieu Abbey, Hampshire. She is critical of cookery books written by men who conceal their secrets, preventing readers from using their recipes successfully.
The preface contains the following passage:
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Wikipedia