The pepper in peperkoek

The ‘pepper’ in peperkoek means a mixture of spices, including pepper, though pepper isn’t always used in old recipes. Ginger, when used, is used sparingly so that it forms a supporting flavour in harmony with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg and mace. Because ginger isn’t our main flavouring on the continent, we do not call these bakes ‘gingerbread’. We also never used actual bread as an ingredient, which was a practice in England for early gingerbread.

Spicing varies between cinnamon as the prominent flavour, cloves in older recipes, and aniseed in the Netherlands and Germany. Honey and (rye) flour were the main ingredients before sugar imports made the use of sugar syrup in cheaper versions possible. Brown sugar made the dough darker and the flavour more rounded. When times, tastes, and fashions changed, the tough printed peperkoek got butter as an ingredient, and speculatie or speculaas was born. It didn’t replace the older-style koek, though, as taai-taai is still very tough (taai translates as tough or chewy) and the couque de Dinant is still the same as it was a thousand years ago using just honey and flour.