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Martha Bradley
Martha Bradley (fl. 1740s–1755) was a British cookery book writer. Little is known about her life, except that she published the cookery book The British Housewife in 1756 and worked as a cook for over thirty years in the fashionable spa town of Bath, Somerset.
Bradley's only printed work, The British Housewife was released as a 42-issue partwork between January and October 1756. It was published in a two-volume book form in 1758, and is more than a thousand pages long. It is likely that Bradley was dead before the partwork was published. The book follows the French style of nouvelle cuisine, distinguishing Bradley from other female cookery book writers at the time, who focused on the British or English style of food preparation. The work is carefully organised and the recipes taken from other authors are amended, suggesting she was a knowledgeable and experienced cook, able to improve on existing dishes.
Because of the length of The British Housewife, it was not reprinted until 1996; as a result, few modern writers have written extensively on Bradley or her work.
Little is known about the life of Martha Bradley, and what there is has come from her single publication, The British Housewife. In the 1740s she worked as a professional cook in the fashionable spa town of Bath, Somerset, and had over thirty years' experience in the job. The publisher of The British Housewife noted that all of Bradley's papers had been stored with him; the food historian Gilly Lehmann considers this shows Bradley was dead by the time the work was published in the late 1750s. Included in the papers was a handwritten family recipe collection. A reference in the work to William Hogarth's 1753 book The Analysis of Beauty indicates that at least some of the book was written after that date.
Based on the recipes shown in her work, Lehmann contends that Bradley had read several contemporary cookery books, including those by Mary Eales (Mrs Mary Eales's Receipts, 1718), Patrick Lamb (Royal Cookery, 1726—the third edition), Vincent La Chapelle (The Modern Cook, 1733) and Hannah Glasse (The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, 1747). The recipes from these have all been changed and improved from the originals, with a reduced set of ingredients and simplified instructions; according to the food writer Alan Davidson, this showed she had been knowledgeable and able in her chosen career. According to Lehmann The British Housewife was more than just a cookery book, but instead was "a complete manual for the housewife, the cook, the housekeeper, the gardener and the farrier, with monthly sections of advice and recipes which cover every aspect of domestic management in the middle of the eighteenth century".
The British Housewife was first published as a partwork in 42 weekly editions, possibly the first cookery book issued in this manner; the first issue was on 10 January 1756. The weekly editions comprised "four large half-sheets of printing" costing 3d. The weekly editions would have finished in October that year, and would have cost 10s 6d in total. The partworks were advertised across Britain, including Oxford, Leeds, Manchester and Sussex. In the text of the partworks Bradley would advertise the other issues, telling readers "We have in our preceding numbers given the cook so ample instruction for the roasting of all plain joints of meat ... that she cannot be at a loss in any of them".
The work was published in book form in 1758; its two volumes comprised over 1,200 pages. Some sources show differing dates. Virginia Maclean's 1981 history A Short-Title Catalogue of Household and Cookery Books Published in the English Tongue, 1701–1800 put the publication date at 1760, but Arnold Oxford's 1913 work English Cookery Books to the Year 1850 listed it as c. 1770 with 752 pages.
The British Housewife, as published in 1758, contains recipes for fricassees, ragùs (which Bradley spelled "Ragoo"), collops, pilafs, pasties, pies (including oyster and eel), fish dishes, soups (which she spelled as both "soup" and "soop"), bisques, desserts—including puddings, jellies, pancakes, fritters, flummeries, cakes syllabubs and confectionery—and preserved foods, including pickles and jams. Bradley also included a section dedicated to distilling spirits, as well as making wine, beer and cider. Bradley's recipes include most parts of the animal, including the intestines, cockscombs, knuckle, head, heart, tongue, udder, trotters, feet, ears and cheeks. The book also contained a chapter on cures for common ailments, which included a recipe that used powdered earthworm to cure ague.
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Martha Bradley
Martha Bradley (fl. 1740s–1755) was a British cookery book writer. Little is known about her life, except that she published the cookery book The British Housewife in 1756 and worked as a cook for over thirty years in the fashionable spa town of Bath, Somerset.
Bradley's only printed work, The British Housewife was released as a 42-issue partwork between January and October 1756. It was published in a two-volume book form in 1758, and is more than a thousand pages long. It is likely that Bradley was dead before the partwork was published. The book follows the French style of nouvelle cuisine, distinguishing Bradley from other female cookery book writers at the time, who focused on the British or English style of food preparation. The work is carefully organised and the recipes taken from other authors are amended, suggesting she was a knowledgeable and experienced cook, able to improve on existing dishes.
Because of the length of The British Housewife, it was not reprinted until 1996; as a result, few modern writers have written extensively on Bradley or her work.
Little is known about the life of Martha Bradley, and what there is has come from her single publication, The British Housewife. In the 1740s she worked as a professional cook in the fashionable spa town of Bath, Somerset, and had over thirty years' experience in the job. The publisher of The British Housewife noted that all of Bradley's papers had been stored with him; the food historian Gilly Lehmann considers this shows Bradley was dead by the time the work was published in the late 1750s. Included in the papers was a handwritten family recipe collection. A reference in the work to William Hogarth's 1753 book The Analysis of Beauty indicates that at least some of the book was written after that date.
Based on the recipes shown in her work, Lehmann contends that Bradley had read several contemporary cookery books, including those by Mary Eales (Mrs Mary Eales's Receipts, 1718), Patrick Lamb (Royal Cookery, 1726—the third edition), Vincent La Chapelle (The Modern Cook, 1733) and Hannah Glasse (The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, 1747). The recipes from these have all been changed and improved from the originals, with a reduced set of ingredients and simplified instructions; according to the food writer Alan Davidson, this showed she had been knowledgeable and able in her chosen career. According to Lehmann The British Housewife was more than just a cookery book, but instead was "a complete manual for the housewife, the cook, the housekeeper, the gardener and the farrier, with monthly sections of advice and recipes which cover every aspect of domestic management in the middle of the eighteenth century".
The British Housewife was first published as a partwork in 42 weekly editions, possibly the first cookery book issued in this manner; the first issue was on 10 January 1756. The weekly editions comprised "four large half-sheets of printing" costing 3d. The weekly editions would have finished in October that year, and would have cost 10s 6d in total. The partworks were advertised across Britain, including Oxford, Leeds, Manchester and Sussex. In the text of the partworks Bradley would advertise the other issues, telling readers "We have in our preceding numbers given the cook so ample instruction for the roasting of all plain joints of meat ... that she cannot be at a loss in any of them".
The work was published in book form in 1758; its two volumes comprised over 1,200 pages. Some sources show differing dates. Virginia Maclean's 1981 history A Short-Title Catalogue of Household and Cookery Books Published in the English Tongue, 1701–1800 put the publication date at 1760, but Arnold Oxford's 1913 work English Cookery Books to the Year 1850 listed it as c. 1770 with 752 pages.
The British Housewife, as published in 1758, contains recipes for fricassees, ragùs (which Bradley spelled "Ragoo"), collops, pilafs, pasties, pies (including oyster and eel), fish dishes, soups (which she spelled as both "soup" and "soop"), bisques, desserts—including puddings, jellies, pancakes, fritters, flummeries, cakes syllabubs and confectionery—and preserved foods, including pickles and jams. Bradley also included a section dedicated to distilling spirits, as well as making wine, beer and cider. Bradley's recipes include most parts of the animal, including the intestines, cockscombs, knuckle, head, heart, tongue, udder, trotters, feet, ears and cheeks. The book also contained a chapter on cures for common ailments, which included a recipe that used powdered earthworm to cure ague.