The History of Gingerbread at Christmas
The History of Gingerbread
Gingerbread, and other food such as cookies, flavoured with ginger (and other spices) are now thought of as 'Christmas flavours'.
Ginger is a spice which first came into Europe from Asia via Arabia in in the 1st century, although it had been used in its native areas and countries like China, to treat things like stomach ache, for several hundred years.
The first gingerbread might have brought into Europe in 992 by Gregory of Nicopolis, who was an Armenian monk. He went to live in northern France and is recorded teaching people how to make gingerbread.
During the middle ages Ginger became more popular in Europe as a flavouring. Some of the first recorded recipes for 'Gingerbread' were for ginger, and other exotic spices like nutmeg and cloves, to be mixed with honey and thickened with breadcrumbs (or sometimes even parsnips). That's where the name 'gingerbread' comes from. This mixture was more like a sticky cake and not like the gingerbread which we build into houses!
A type of gingerbread (pierniki toruńskie) has been made in Toruń in Poland since the 1300s. In the 1400s there are records from a convent in Sweden saying that nuns baked gingerbread as eating it helped ease indigestion. And in the 1500s in England a writer said Gingerbread was "a kinde of cake or paste made to comfort the stomacke".
In the UK early gingerbread was also often coloured red and known as 'red gingerbread'. There was also 'white gingerbread' which was marzipan mixed with spices.
In Germany, the first Christmas Trees were decorated with edible things, such as gingerbread and gold covered apples. In 1605 an unknown German wrote: "At Christmas they set up fir trees in the parlours of Strasbourg and hang thereon roses cut out of many-colored paper, apples, wafers, gold foil, sweets, etc.".
In the 1700s and 1800s gingerbread recipes changed as sugar became cheaper. Gingerbread became more like biscuits/cookies with flour and treacle/molasses replacing the honey and breadcrumbs. Gingerbread was made into shapes by pressing the dough into wooden moulds made into shapes like figures and animals. It could be very tough to eat when it was first cooked and sometimes needed to 'mature' and 'soften' to make it more edible.
By the Victorian period, in the UK, ginger was the cheapest 'spice' available and gingerbread was eaten all through the year.
In countries like Germany, Austria, Denmark and The Netherlands, gingerbread was (and is) still mainly associated with Christmas with special gingerbreads like lebkuchen and pfefferniisse/pepernoot/pebernødder.
Many German bakers came to England in the 1800s and bought their Christmas gingerbread traditions with them. Settlers to the USA brought of gingerbread from different parts of Europe with them.
Gingerbread Men
The first recorded gingerbread men are when Queen Elizabeth I of England had figures made of gingerbread. They were make to look like some of her important guests and were probably made using wooden moulds rather than cookie cutters.
In Germany gingerbread men (and other shapes like animals) were, and still are, hung on Christmas Trees as ornaments.
In the UK during the Victorian period, bakers made gingerbread 'husbands and wives' to give your loved one on Valentines Day! There are records of the British Royal Christmas Tree having gingerbread figures and ornaments hung on them, which also helped to make gingerbread popular at Christmas in the UK.
The Nutcracker ballet, first performed in 1892, the Nutcracker leads an army of gingerbread men against the Mouse King and his followers.
The fairy tale 'The Gingerbread Man' or 'The Gingerbread Boy' was published from May 1875 in the children's monthly 'St Nicholas Magazine'. In the story a gingerbread man escapes from an oven and runs away from several different people and animals but is captured (and eaten!) by a fox. This story was the inspiration for 'Gingy' the gingerbread man from the Shrek films.
Gingerbread Houses
Gingerbread houses were first made in Germany in the 1800s. In Germany they are known as Lebkuchenhaus or Pfefferkuchenhaus.
The fairy tale 'Hansel and Gretel' (Hänsel und Gretel) was published in 1812 in the book 'Grimm's Fairy Tails'. It tells the story of a young brother and sister who are lost in a forest and end in the house of a witch. The house is made of bread, cake and sweets/candy.
Food historians aren't sure if the fairy tale gave German bakers the idea of making Gingerbread houses or if the idea for the story came from Gingerbread houses which were already being sold!
The opera 'Hänsel und Gretel' by the composer Engelbert Humperdinck was first performed at Christmas 1893. In this version the house is described as being made from Gingerbread rather than normal bread.
German immigrants took the custom of Christmas Gingerbread houses and Gingerbread men with them to the USA.
Decorating Gingerbread houses is now a popular Christmas custom all over the world.