Last updated at 20:59 26 March 2007

Her methods sound more domestic disaster than domestic goddess.

But Eliza Smith was, in fact, the Nigella Lawson of her day.

From sliced cow heels to a sauce of minced pig ears, she knew how to please an 18th century palate.

Even better, she had remedies for fevers, boils and baldness, and all the best tips for pickling and brewing.

So - like any celebrity chef worth their salt - she sold her secrets to the public.

Now a copy of her book The Compleat Housewife or Accomplish-d Gentlewoman's Companion, published in 1736, has surfaced at an auction house.

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The 373-page work, which is leather-bound, is expected to fetch £800 when it goes under the hammer in May.

It offers an intriguing picture of life before the Industrial Revolution, only 70 years after the Great Plague.

Very little is known about the author, who is believed to have been born in the late 17th century. But she reveals in her preface that for over 30 years she had been employed 'in fashionable and noble Families'.

Auctioneer Charles Hanson, a regular on the BBC's Bargain Hunt antiques show, said: "What is clear is that Mrs Smith was very much the domestic goddess of her day.

"We do know that she worked for a number of fashionable houses and noble families of the time.

"Though many of her ideas sound alarming to us, she was very much in the tradition of what were known as 'ladies of taste' and highly respected."

The book lists more than 600 recipes for cakes, pastry, confectionery, and meals such as the sliced cow's feet and 'ragoo of pig's ear' garnished with 'barberies', or barberries, a bitter fruit.

Originally published in 1727 shortly before Smith's death it was revised 18 times over the following three decades. This seventh edition, which cost the original buyer five shillings, promised 'very large additions' including 'near fifty receipts being communicated just before the author's death'.

It also boasts 'above two-hundred family receipts of medicines' - including a remedy for boils using a newly-laid egg mixed with honey and a cure for 'spotted fever' with snake-weed, treacle and raspberry juice.

Mrs Smith also offers an unlikely-sounding remedy for baldness - involving 'two ounces of boar's grease, one dram of the ashes of burnt bees and one dram of the ashes of Southernwood'.

She says of her remedies: "They are all excellent in their kind and have cured when all other means have failed and are ready to serve the publick."

The book, of which only around 150 copies are thought to have been produced, was found at a valuation day run by Mr Hanson in Kings Bromley, Staffordshire.

Its owner, who does not want to be identified, came forward after Mr Hanson, of Hanson's Auctioneers, Lichfield, Staffordshire, sold a work by the man described as the Gordon Ramsay of his day.

The Accomplish'd Cook - the Art and Mastery of Cookery, penned by 17th century 'celebrity chef' Robert May in 1678, fetched £4,500 in January.