Every autumn, nature puts on a brilliant show of color adorned in glorious shades of yellow and gold, orange and red, the perfect segue into the holiday season, my favorite time of year! Who doesn’t love to decorate their house and bake fragrant treats to share? And what smells more like Christmas than gingerbread men baking in the oven! Did you know that the first gingerbread man is credited to the court of Queen Elizabeth I, who impressed important visitors with charming gingerbread likenesses of themselves?
Origin of Gingerbread
The origins of gingerbread are steeped in a flavorful tradition and date back to the ancient world. Ginger root is Malaysian and was once used to soothe an upset stomach and prevent a cold. In 2000 BC wealthy Greek families sailed to the isle of Rhodes to buy “spiced honey cakes.” Throughout pre-Christian Europe, the Winter Solstice was celebrated with the creation and ingestion of small gingerbread cakes adorned with symbols of the sun.
In the 11th century, Crusaders returning from the Middle East brought with them a mysterious and heretofore unknown succession of ingredients that would become the mainstay for the gingerbread recipe. These included spices, (ginger) sugars, almonds and citrus fruits. Catholic monks baked gingerbread for special religious celebrations. Often depicting saints and other religious motifs, these wonderful early carvings were made via large and elaborately carved “cookie boards” that impressed the pattern onto a stiff rolled dough.
As the costs of exotic ingredients and spices dropped, gingerbread slowly became more popular across Europe and Britain. Around 1300, the English added bread crumbs to the mixture of spices and developed “ginger candy.” In the 16th and 17th centuries, gingerbread became lighter, with flour replacing breadcrumbs in the recipes. As early as 1573, treacle (molasses) was used instead of honey, and by the mid 1600s it had replaced honey altogether. Butter and eggs became popular additions to enrich the mixture.
Did you know that in Medieval times it was illegal for anyone but the members of the Baker’s Guild (or in London the Gingerbread Guild) to make gingerbread, except at Yuletide? In the 17th century, only professional gingerbread bakers were allowed to bake the spicy treat in Germany and France. Rules relaxed during Christmas and Easter, when anyone was permitted to bake it.
Gingerbread became so popular that many festivities were actually known as “gingerbread fairs.” In England the alternative name of “fairings” came to mean a gift given at or brought from a fair. Early bakers created certain shapes in association with the different seasons of the year. During the spring, buttons and flowers were the most prevalent motifs, while in autumn animals and birds predominated. Forms were generally inspired by the commonplace images of daily life. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, decorative themes expanded to include elaborate depictions of lords, ladies, soldiers, castles and occasionally floral and geometric designs.
The different countries maintained their own variation of gingerbread. In some places, it took the form of a soft, spiced cake while in others it was a crisp flat cookie. Still other modifications called for thick dark squares of bread that were sometimes served with whipped cream or lemon sauce. Of all the countries in Europe, Germany had the most enduring tradition of flat, shaped gingerbreads. Even today, throughout Germany at every autumn fair, there are rows of stalls filled with hundreds of gingerbread hearts decorated with white and colored icing and tied with ribbons.
The tradition of baking a Gingerbread house began in Germany after the Brothers Grimm published their collection of German fairy tales in the early 1800s. Among the tales was the story of Hansel and Gretel. The story featured a gingerbread house, which was called “Hexenhäuschen”, (Witch House).
Of all the German cities, Nuremberg became known as the “gingerbread capital” of the world. Sculptors, painters, woodcarvers and goldsmiths all contributed in the creation of the most beautiful cakes in Europe. Gifted craftsmen carved wooden molds and talented artists assisted with the frosting. Many of these designs were actually objets d’art, varied and incredibly fancy, depicting angels, hearts and wreaths.
Nuremberg gingerbread was not baked in the home. It was the exclusive production of a Guild of master bakers known as the Lebkuchler. Their creations known as lebuucken, called for all of the flavorings and ingredients available at the time. These included cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, white pepper, anise and ginger. Larger pieces of gingerbread even today are used to build hexenhäeusle (witches’ houses), also referred to as Knusperhaeuschen (houses for nibbling at).
During the 19th century, gingerbread became a romantic as well as a delicious phenomenon of the modern world. Early settlers from Northern Europe brought the gingerbread tradition and their family recipes to the New World. American recipes, for the most part, utilized fewer spices and focused on regional ingredients. Maple syrup gingerbreads, for example were specialties of New England, while in the South, sorghum molasses was often used.
Regional variations sprouted with the influx of more and more immigrants. Pennsylvania particularly, was greatly influenced by German cooking and many traditional German gingerbreads reappeared in this area, especially at Christmas time. “Hard gingerbreads” were shaped into little pudgy men until the introduction of the cookie cutter.
Cookies shaped with tin cutters became tree ornaments. The York True Democrat of 1868 reports: “Cakes of various forms and quality droop from the different limbs, birds of paradise, humming birds, robins, peewees, and a variety of others seem to twitter among the evergreens.”
During the late 19th century, as Christmas became more and more a commercial holiday, these cookies became part of the season itself, depicting wreaths, Santas, elves, snowmen, toys and sleds. The gingerbread tradition is and always will be associated with the joys of the holiday season. Nowhere in the world is there a greater repertoire of recipes for this wondrous creation than in the US. It’s as if a special blend of magic occurs in the kitchen at this time of year as the imaginative among us play with all of the wonderful ingredients available in the market today.
Making a homemade gingerbread house can be a fun Christmas family tradition–it’s a great art project for little ones, artistic teens and everyone in between. Your finished gingerbread house will make an impressive centerpiece on your holiday table (if you and the kids can resist nibbling at it!) Check out the following video for a little inspiration…
Video courtesy of Lucian Wischik
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