Author(s): Eliza Smith

Reference

Drawing on the experience she gained while 'constantly employed by fashionable and noble families', Eliza Smith, writing a hundred years before Mrs Beeton, compiled a collection of more than 600 recipes which had met with 'the general approbation'. She was also at pains to pass on, for the benefit of every 'accomplished gentlewoman', a multitude of cures and remedies 'never before made publick' for every ailment from a pimpled face to the bite of a mad dog, together with a number of useful DIY tips.