Koek for medicinal purposes

Cakes made with honey and flour are as old as bread, but recipes only appeared when people started to write them down, first in medical texts and later in manuscripts devoted solely to cooking. The aforementioned manuscript noting the spices for peperkoek, written by the doctor of Deventer, was one such medical text, and it is also the first written reference to the word ‘peperkoek’. For it to appear in a work like that shows peperkoek would have been around for a while, to make it common enough to use in this context.