“And I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread” – wrote William Shakespeare in ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’.
Gingerbread is a sweet food product flavoured with ginger, and typically using honey or molasses. It varies, ranging from a soft, moist loaf cake to something close to a biscuit ginger. But all of them have a common origin.
The term gingerbread originally referred to preserved ginger. It then referred to a confection made with honey and spices. Gingerbread is often used to translate the French term pain d’épices (literally ‘spice bread’) or the German term Lebkuchen or Pfefferkuchen (pepperbread, literally: pepper cake). The term Lebkuchen is unspecified in the German language. It can mean Leben (life) or Laib (loaf), while the last term comes from the wide range of spices used in this product.
Gingerbread was brought to Europe in 992 by the Armenian monk Gregory of Nicopolis (Gregory Makar). He left Nicopolis Pompeii, to live in Bondaroy (France), near the town of Pithiviers. He stayed there for seven years, and taught gingerbread baking to French Christians. He died in 999.
During the 13th century, gingerbread was brought to Sweden by German immigrants. In 15th-century Germany, a gingerbread guild controlled production. Early references from the Vadstena Abbey show how the Swedish nuns were baking gingerbread to ease indigestion in 1444. It was the custom to bake white biscuits and paint them as window decorations.
The first documented trade of gingerbread biscuits dates to the 17th century, where they were sold in monasteries, pharmacies and town square farmers’ markets. In Medieval England, gingerbread was thought to have medicinal properties. One hundred years later, the town of Market Drayton in Shropshire, UK, became known for its gingerbread, as is proudly displayed on their town’s welcome sign.
The first recorded mention of gingerbread being baked in the town dates back to 1793. However, it was probably made earlier, as ginger was stocked in high street businesses from the 1640s. Gingerbread became widely available from the 18th century.
In England, gingerbread may refer to a cake, or a type of cookie/biscuit made with ginger. In the biscuit form, it commonly takes the form of a gingerbread man. Gingerbread men were first attributed to Queen Elizabeth I, who allegedly served the figurines to foreign dignitaries. Today, however, they are generally served around Christmas.
Parkin is a soft gingerbread cake made with oatmeal and treacle which is popular in northern England. In the United States, this form of gingerbread is sometimes called ‘gingerbread cake’ or ‘ginger cake’ to distinguish it from the harder forms. French pain d’épices is somewhat similar, though generally slightly drier, and involves honey rather than treacle. Original French gingerbread did not contain ginger.
In Germany, gingerbread is made in two forms — a soft form called Lebkuchen and a harder form, particularly associated with carnivals and street markets such as Christmas markets. The hard gingerbread is made in decorative shapes, which are then further decorated with sweets and icing. The tradition of cutting gingerbread into shapes takes many other forms, and exists in many countries, a well-known example being the gingerbread man. Traditionally, these were dunked in port wine.
European recipe for gingerbread consisted of ground almonds, stale breadcrumbs, rosewater, sugar and ginger. The resultant paste was pressed into wooden moulds. These carved works of art served as a sort of storyboard that told the news of the day, bearing the likeness of new kings, emperors, and queens, or religious symbols. The finished cookie might be decorated with edible gold paint (for those who could afford it) or flat white icing to bring out the details in relief.
In the 16th century, the English replaced breadcrumbs with flour, and added eggs and sweeteners, resulting in a lighter product. The first gingerbread man is credited to Queen Elizabeth I, who knocked the socks off visiting dignitaries by presenting them with one baked in their own likeness. Gingerbread tied with a ribbon was popular at fairs and, when exchanged, became a token of love.
Gingerbread Today
Gingerbread is a baked sweet containing ginger and sometimes cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom and anise and sweetened with any combination of brown sugar, molasses, light or dark corn syrup, or honey. Gingerbread can take the shape of thin, crisp cookies like snaps, Polish pierniczki, Czech pernik, Russian pryaniki, Croatian licitars, Scandinavian pepparkakor, and Dutch speculaas cut into hearts or other fanciful shapes. Gingerbread also can be a dark, spicy cake-like Polish piernik, or an American version served, sometimes, with lemon glaze. The third form gingerbread takes is a house-shaped confection made with a variation of gingerbread cookie dough.
Major European Gingerbread Centres
Gingerbread is considered an art form in Nuremberg, Ulm and Pulsnitz in Germany, Torun in Poland, Tula in Russia, Pest in Hungary, Pardubice and Prague in the Czech Republic, and Lyon in France where gingerbread baking guilds were sanctioned by the government from the Middle Ages. Vast antique mould collections are displayed in the Torun and Ulm museums, and some are used to making beeswax Christmas ornaments that is in great demand.
Gingerbread Houses
The gingerbread house became popular in Germany after the Brothers Grimm published their fairy tale collection which included ‘Hansel and Gretel’ in 19th century. Early German settlers brought this lebkuchenhaeusle (gingerbread house) tradition to the Americas. Gingerbread houses never caught on in Britain as they did in North America, where some extraordinary examples can be found. But they do exist in other parts of Europe.
In December 2001, bakers in Torun (Poland) attempted to beat the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest-ever gingerbread house. It was made in Szczecin, Poland, with 4,000 loaves of brick-shaped gingerbread measuring 11-and-a-half feet high. It took a week to create it with 6,000 eggs, a ton of flour and 550 pounds of shortening being used. Alas, they lost to an American team.
For The Road
In modern times, the tradition has continued in certain places in Europe. In Germany, Christmas markets still sell decorated gingerbread before Christmas. Making gingerbread houses is still a way of celebrating Christmas in many families. They are built traditionally before Christmas using pieces of baked gingerbread dough assembled with melted sugar. The roof tiles can consist of frosting or candy. The gingerbread house yard is usually decorated with icing to represent snow.
A gingerbread house does not have to be an actual house, although it is the most common. It can be anything from a castle to a small cabin, or another kind of building, such as a church, an art museum or a sports stadium and other items, such as cars, gingerbread men and gingerbread women, can be made of gingerbread dough.
