Gingerbread

The word “gingerbread” actually indicates the two main ingredients of the first gingerbread receipts (recipes): ginger and bread crumbs. Other ingredients varied with the century and the locale. Gingerbread was a European import and had been made in Europe in different forms since the Medieval Crusaders introduced sugar, spices, almonds, and citrus fruits. The fifteenth-century English gingerbread was prepared by boiling honey and adding pepper, saffron, and bread crumbs. By the end of the sixteenth century in England, sugar replaced honey and red gingerbread contained Claret wine. The sweetener changed to treacle (molasses) by the mid-seventeenth century and wheat flour replaced the bread crumbs. With the addition of butter and cream, the receipts of the eighteenth century very much resembled modern gingerbread cookies of today.