Martha Bradley (fl. 1740s–1755) was a British cookery book writer. Apart from the book she published, little is known about her life, except that she 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.[a] It was then released 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, which makes her different from other female cookery book writers at the time, who focused on the British or English style of food preparation. The work is well-organised and the recipes taken from other authors are amended, suggesting she was a knowledgeable and experienced cook, able to improve on pre-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.
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