Spice it up

Gingerbread biscuits, gingerbread houses, ginger cakes, Lebkuchen, ginger wines and candied ginger all find a warm welcome in our homes at Christmas. Along with cinnamon, cloves and allspice, ginger is one of those sweet spices which tends to spark a cry of ‘Oh! Smells like Christmas.’ As with so many of the foods associated with the modern Christmas, gingerbread started out as a rich person’s feast food, before descending the social scale. In some forms it is still eaten widely outside Christmas, especially as a biscuit; though a poll in 2020 put ginger nuts a woeful fourteenth on the list of Britain’s favourite biscuits. (Jaffa Cakes, shortbread and chocolate fingers made the top five. Broken Britain indeed.)