Ginger Biscuits

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

ginger biscuits including ‘ginger snaps’ and gingernuts, are the British representatives of a much wider group of European spiced biscuits, and are closely related to, indeed sometimes overlap with, gingerbread.

Most recipes rely on the old method of melting treacle, golden syrup, and brown sugar with quantities of butter, before adding flour. Originally the biscuits would have been based on melted honey (a substance which still gives a special flavour and texture to some spiced biscuits such as lebkuchen), mixed with flour and spices.