The Low Countries’ Gingerbread

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.