Born and raised in Doncaster, Yorkshire, Raffald went into domestic service for fifteen years, ending as the housekeeper to the Warburton baronets at Arley Hall, Cheshire.

The couple moved to Manchester, Lancashire, where Raffald opened a register office to introduce domestic workers to employers; she also ran a cookery school and sold food from the premises.

Raffald's recipes have been admired by several modern cooks and food writers, including Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson.

[c] The ceremony took place on 3 March 1763 at St Mary and All Saints Church, Great Budworth, Cheshire; on 23 April the couple left the Warburtons' service and moved to Fennel Street, Manchester,[1][12] where John's family tended market gardens near the River Irwell.

She rented her spare rooms for storage, began a register office to bring together, for a fee, domestic staff with employers,[17] and advertised that she was "pleased to give her business of supplying cold entertainments, hot French dishes, confectionaries, &c."[18] Over the next few years her business grew, and she added cookery classes to the services she supplied.

[e] Here John sold seeds and plants,[1][20] while Raffald, according to her advertisements in the local press, supplied "jellies, creams, possets, flummery, lemon cheese cakes, and all other decorations for cold entertainments; also, Yorkshire hams, tongues, brawn, Newcastle salmon, and sturgeon, pickles, and ketchups of all kinds, lemon pickles";[21] she also supplied the produce for, and organised, civic dinners.

[30] In the introduction to The Experienced English Housekeeper, Raffald states "I can faithfully assure my friends that ... [the recipes] are wrote from my own experience and not borrowed from any other author".

[27] The historian Kate Colquhoun observes that Glasse and Raffald "wrote with an easy confidence", and both were the biggest cookery book sellers in the Georgian era.

[1][k] At some point the Raffalds had also run the Bulls Head tavern—an important post house in the area,[1][15] but in August 1772 the couple took possession of a coaching inn they described as: the old accustomed and commodious inn, known by the sign of the Kings Head in Salford, Manchester, which they have fitted up in the neatest and most elegant manner, for the reception and accommodation of the nobility, gentry, merchants and tradesmen.

John was drinking heavily and feeling suicidal; when he said he wanted to drown himself, Raffald replied "I do think that it might be the best step you could take, for then you would be relieved of all your troubles and anxieties and you really do harass me very much.

John, as all the financial dealings were in his name, settled the debts by assigning over all the couple's assets and leaving the Kings Head;[43] he was declared bankrupt.

[10] A week after Raffald's death, John's creditors took action and he was forced to close the coffee shop and sell off all his assets;[10] initially he attempted to let it as a going concern, but there were no offers, so the lease and all his furniture was handed over to settle the debts.

[39] Colquhoun considers that the recipes Raffald wrote were those that appealed to Middle England, including "shredded calves' feet, hot chicken pies and carrot puddings, poached eggs on toast, macaroni with parmesan, and lettuce stewed in mint and gravy".

[52] More than a third of the recipes in The Experienced English Housekeeper were given over to confectionery, including an early recipe for "Burnt Cream" (crème brûlée), details of how to spin sugar into sugar baskets and instructions of how to create multi-layered jellies, which included in them "fish made from flummery or hen's nests from thinly sliced, syrup poached lemon rind".

[53] The food historian Esther Bradford Aresty considers that "fantasy was Mrs. Raffald's specialty",[54] and cites examples of "A Transparent Pudding Cover'd with a Silver Web, and Globes of Gold with Mottoes in Them", "A Rocky Island", which has peaks of gilded Flummery, a sprig of myrtle decorated with meringue, and a calves-foot jelly sea.

[54] Colquhoun thinks some of the recipes are "just a bit bizarre",[49] including the "Rabbit Surprised", where the cook is instructed, after roasting, to "draw out the jaw-bones and stick them in the eyes to appear like horns".

[55] Colquhoun admires Raffald's turn of phrase, such as the advice to reserve water from a raised-pie pastry, as "it makes the crust sad".

[56][57] Shipperbottom highlights Raffald's phrases such as "dry salt will candy and shine like diamonds on your bacon",[39][l] and that wine "summer-beams and blinks in the tub" if barm is not added in time.

[64] The historian Hannah Barker, in her examination of businesswomen in northern England, observes that this process could take weeks or months to complete.

[83] The food writer Alan Davidson observes that Raffald's recipe—for "sweet patties"—was the basis from which the Eccles cake was later developed.

The 20th-century cookery writer Elizabeth David references Raffald several times in her articles, collected in Is There a Nutmeg in the House,[90] which includes a recipe for apricot ice cream.

[92] In English Bread and Yeast Cookery (1977), David includes recipes for crumpets, barm pudding, "wegg" (caraway seed cake) and bath buns.

[93] The food writer Jane Grigson admired Raffald's work, and in her 1974 book English Food, she included five of Raffald's recipes: bacon and egg pie (a Quiche Lorraine with a pastry lid); "whet" (anchovy fillets and cheese on toast); potted ham with chicken; crème brûlée; and orange custards.

[94] Raffald is quoted around 270 times in the Oxford English Dictionary,[95] including for the terms "bride cake",[96] "gofer-tongs",[97] "hedgehog soup"[98] and "Hottentot pie".