Eliza Acton

Eliza Acton, born on April seventeenth, 1799, in Sussex, was a pioneering English food writer and poet. She is best known for her groundbreaking cookery book, Modern Cookery for Private Families, published in eighteen forty-five. This work was one of the first aimed at the domestic reader and introduced the now-standard practice of listing ingredients alongside suggested cooking times for each recipe. Among its many contributions, Acton provided the first English recipes for Brussels sprouts and spaghetti, as well as the first recipe for what she termed 'Christmas pudding'.

Raised in Suffolk, Acton initially ran a girls' boarding school before venturing to France. Upon her return to England in eighteen twenty-six, she published a collection of poetry, setting the stage for her culinary endeavors. Modern Cookery was well-received, quickly reprinted within the year, and saw several editions until nineteen eighteen, when its publisher, Longman, ceased reprints.

In eighteen fifty-seven, Acton released The English Bread-Book for Domestic Use, a more scholarly exploration of bread-making in England, which included a study of European baking methods and numerous recipes. Although Modern Cookery was eventually overshadowed by Isabella Beeton's Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management in eighteen sixty-one, which included several plagiarized recipes from Acton, her work continued to influence English cooks throughout the twentieth century, inspiring notable figures such as Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Delia Smith, and Rick Stein.