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The Low Countries’ Gingerbread
Appears in
Published 2023
For centuries, the craving for sweetness was satisfied with honey. First wild honey, but later beekeeping became part of everyday rural life. That one would knead honey and flour into a dough for cake is a natural and logical evolution.
The Lebzelter (the ‘medar’ or honey processor) processed the honey and made some into honey cakes and some into mead, then turned the honeycombs into beeswax for ornaments and candles. For centuries these three were connected. Honey-cake making was usually done in monasteries, where bees were kept and the monks were in need of church candles and, of course, were partial to mead. A painting in a Nuremberg manuscript from 1520 depicts a monk baking honey cakes.