gingerbread

I made a gingerbread cake the other day and it was truly a thing to bring joy to the taste buds ! I added lots more chopped ginger and some chopped walnuts to this excellent BBC recipe and used lemon juice to make the icing sharper.

I made me wonder how the recipe was thought of. 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.

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. Gingerbread became widely available in the 18th century

In England, gingerbread refers not to a cake, but a type of biscuit made with ginger. It commonly takes the form of a gingerbread man. Gingerbread men (and women!) are first attributed to Queen Elizabeth I, who allegedly served the figurines to foreign dignitaries. Today, however, they are generally served at Christmastime.

The Germans and Austrians have Lebkuchen (Leben (life) or Laib (loaf) which are different but also utterly irresistible :~)