This is how Gingerbread Cookies came into being

It’s just a few hours to the biggest festival of the year and we are already up for some delicious food with a pleasing smell. The pleasant smell of freshly baked cookies makes us wonder how the delicious food came into being. Today, we are talking about the delicious ‘Gingerbread cookies’, which are quite popular with the kids for their fascinating shapes & sizes. This cookie is famously made in the shape of a man and is famously called ‘The Gingerbread Man’, who according to the fairy tale is afraid of a cow, a horse, and a chicken, but in the end, gets eaten by a fox. So, here’s how these cookies came into being.

From candy-studded gingerbread men to edible gingerbread houses, there are several forms of gingerbread that you can find across the world. The term gingerbread means any sweet treat made using honey and molasses with a hint of ginger. While in Medieval England, gingerbread meant ‘preserved ginger', according to historians, it was the ancient Egyptians & Greeks who used to make gingerbread for ceremonial purposes. The trend of making gingerbread started in the 11th century in Europe when the crusaders brought back ginger from the Middle East for the cooks of aristocrats, who could experiment with it. When ginger along with the other spices became more affordable, the trend of gingerbread started doing the rounds.

The earliest mention of the gingerbread recipe was in 2400 BC in Greece, as per Rhonda Massingham Hart, author of ‘Making Gingerbread Houses’. And the earliest recipe included stale breadcrumbs, ground almonds, sugar, rosewater, and, of course - ginger. All these things were mixed together to make a paste that was pressed into carved wooden moulds to make delicious gingerbread cookies. The finished hard cookies were painted with edible gold or gold leaf or flat white icing and these cookies were shaped like kings & queens and animals. During the Medieval fairs in Germany, France, England and Holland, these cookies were served as a staple food and were called ‘fairings’.

The legend of this cookie varies depending on where it is coming from! Apparently, the credit for inventing this ‘man-shaped cookie’ goes to Queen Elizabeth I, who made them to represent the guests she was expecting. Another funny story about its invention says that ‘a few women ate these cookies to increase their chances of attracting a man’.

In today’s time, you can find gingerbread in various shapes and sizes. From Russian ‘pryaniki’ to crisp cookies like ‘snaps’ and the Dutch ‘speculaas’ (cut into a heart shape), this sweet treat is a blessing for all the sweet lovers. Though it has always been, but today it’s considered more like a token of love than anything else. And of course, no one can forget ‘the gingerbread house’, which the kids love to eat and make as well. If we look at the current recipes of gingerbread, there has been quite a shift in it. These days, you can find gingerbread recipes with spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, star anise, clove, and even green cardamom’s flavour in them.