Gingerbread
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| Main ingredients | Ginger root, honey or molasses |
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Gingerbread refers to a broad category of baked goods, typically flavored with ginger, cloves, nutmeg or cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar or molasses. Gingerbread foods vary, ranging from a soft, moist loaf cake to something close to a ginger biscuit.
Originally, the term gingerbread (from Latin zingiber via Old French gingebras) 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 (Leb is unspecified in the German language. It can mean Leben (life) or Laib (loaf), kuchen = cake) or Pfefferkuchen (pepperbread, literally: pepper cake).
Gingerbread was brought to Europe in 992 CE by the Armenian monk Gregory of Nicopolis (also called Gregory Makar and Grégoire de Nicopolis). He left Nicopolis, Pompeii, to live in Bondaroy (France), near the town of Pithiviers. He stayed there seven years and taught gingerbread baking to French Christians. He died in 999.
In 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 that 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 (cookies) 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 to 1793, although it was probably made earlier, as ginger had been stocked in high street businesses since the 1640s. Gingerbread became widely available in the 18th century.
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