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Gingerbread has been baked in Europe for centuries. In some
places, it was a soft, delicately spiced cake; in others, a crisp,
flat cookie, and in others, warm, thick, steamy-dark squares of
"bread," sometimes served with a pitcher of lemon sauce
or whipped cream. It was sometimes light, sometimes dark, sometimes
sweet, sometimes spicy, but it was almost always cut into shapes
such as men, women, stars or animals, and colorfully decorated
or stamped with a mold and dusted with white sugar to make the
impression visible.
The term may be imprecise because in Medieval England gingerbread
meant simply "preserved ginger" and was a corruption
of the Old French gingebras, derived from the Latin name of the
spice, Zingebar. It was only in the fifteenth century that the
term came to be applied to a kind of cake made with treacle and
flavored with ginger.Ginger was also discovered to have a preservative effect when
added to pastries and bread, and this probably led to the development
of recipes for ginger cakes, cookies, Australian gingernuts and
flavored breads.The manufacture of gingerbread appears to have spread throughout
Western Europe at the end of the eleventh century, possibly introduced
by crusaders returning from wars in the Eastern Mediterranean.
From its very beginning gingerbread has been a fairground delicacy.
Many fairs became known as "gingerbread fairs" and gingerbread
items took on the alternative name in England of "fairings"
which had the generic meaning of a gift given at, or brought from,
a fair. Certain shapes were associated with different seasons:
buttons and flowers were found at Easter fairs, and animals and
birds were a feature in Autumn. There is also more than one village
tradition in England requiring unmarried women to eat gingerbread
"husbands" at the fair if they are to stand a good chance
of meeting a real husband. Of course, you could always visit Elizabeth
Botham & Sons, a family-run craft bakery on the North Yorkshire
coast of England, and sample some authentic pastries.If you lived in London in 1614, your family would have gone
to the Bartholomew Fair on August 24. Of the special cakes prepared
for holidays and feasts in England, many were gingerbread. If
a fair honored a town's patron saint, e.g., St. Bartholomew, the
saint's image might have been stamped (and even gilded) into the
gingerbread you would buy. If the fair were on a special market
day, the cakes would probably be decorated with an edible icing
to look like men, animals, valentine hearts or flowers. Sometimes
the dough was simply cut into round "snaps."Gingerbread-making was eventually recognized as a profession
in itself. In the seventeenth century, gingerbread bakers had
the exclusive right to make it, except at Christmas and Easter.
Their street cries could be heard well into the nineteenth century,
but in 1951, writer Henry Mayhew sadly recorded that "there
are only two men in London who make their own gingerbread nuts
for sale in the streets."Of all the countries in Europe, Germany is the one with the
longest and strongest tradition of flat, shaped gingerbreads.
At every autumn fair in Germany, and in the surrounding lands
where the Germanic influence is strong, there are rows of stalls
filled with hundreds of gingerbread hearts, decorated with white
and colored icing and tied with ribbons.If you lived in Nuremberg in 1614, your family would have gone
to the Christkindlmarkt in December. You would have bought carved
Christmas decorations, special sausages, and the famous Nuremberg
Lebkuchen flavored with ginger, which you probably would have
thought was the best in the world. Nuremberg gingerbread was not
baked in the home, but was the preserve of an exclusive Guild
of master bakers, the Lebkuchler.Nuremberg became known as the "gingerbread capital"
of the world and as with any major trading center, many fine craftsmen
were attracted to the town. Sculptors, painters, woodcarvers and
goldsmiths all contributed to the most beautiful gingerbread cakes
in Europe. Gifted craftsmen carved intricate wooden molds, artists
assisted with decoration in frosting or gold paint. Incredibly
fancy hearts, angels, wreaths and other festive shapes were sold
at fairs, carnivals and markets.Lebkuchen are made throughout Germany and large pieces of lebkuchen
are used to build Hexenhaeusle ("witches' houses," from
the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, also called Lebkuchenhaeusel
and Knusperhaeuschen—"houses for nibbling at").Nuremberg merchants, in fact, were so well known for their
spices that they had the nickname "pepper sacks." From
early on, Nuremberg's Lebkuchen packed into one recipe all the
variety of flavorings available to its bakers—cardamom, cloves,
cinnamon, white pepper, anise and ginger.The traditions in France were closer to the German than the
English ones, with noteworthy recipes for pain d'epices coming
from Dijon, Reims and Paris. In 1571, French bakers of pain d'epices
even won the right to their own guild, or professional organization,
separate from the other pastry cooks and bakers. In Paris a gingerbread
fair was held from the eleventh century until the nineteenth century
at an abbey on the site of the present St. Antoine Hospital, where
monks sold gingerbread cut into the shape of pigs.During the nineteenth century, gingerbread was both modernized
and romanticized. When the Grimm brothers collected volumes of
German fairy tales they found one about Hansel and Gretel, two
children who, abandoned in the woods by destitute parents, discovered
a house made of bread, cake and candies. By the end of the century
the composer Englebert Humperdink wrote an opera about the boy
and the girl and the gingerbread house.At Christmas, gingerbread makes its most impressive appearance.
The German practice of making lebkuchen houses never caught on
in Britain in the same way as it did in North America, and it
is here still that the most extraordinary creations are found.
Elaborate Victorian houses, heavy with candies and sugar icicles,
vie in competition with the Hansel and Gretel houses, more richly
decorated and ornamented than most children could imagine in their
wildest dreams.Gingerbread making in North America has its origins in the
traditions of the many settlers from all parts of Northern Europe
who brought with them family recipes and customs. By the nineteenth
century, America had been baking gingerbread for decades.American recipes usually called for fewer spices than their
European counterparts, but often made use of ingredients that
were only available regionally. Maple syrup gingerbreads were
made in New England, and in the South sorghum molasses was used.Regional variations began occurring as more people arrived.
In Pennsylvania, the influence of German cooking was great and
many traditional Germany gingerbreads reappeared in this area,
especially at Christmas time.The North and Midwest of America welcomed the Northern and
Middle Europeans. At Christmas it is still very common in the
midwest to have Scandinavian cookies like Pepparkaker or Lebkuchen.
Often one can find wives holding "coffee kolaches" (coffee
mornings) at which European ginger cakes still reign.Nowhere in the world is there a greater repertoire of gingerbread
recipes than in America —there are so many variations in
taste, form and presentation. With the rich choice of ingredients,
baking aids and decorative items the imaginative cook can create
the most spectacular gingerbread houses and centerpieces ever.
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