Today’s experiment is for those who enjoy the sweeter things in life. Quite literally, because if you eat too much of this recipe your teeth will melt and fill the leftover indents in your gums with brown tooth-and-sugar sap which will eventually dribble down your chin and onto your chest, ruining your favourite shirt.
Quite an image.
I’m only half joking, too. No, there isn’t some sort of bone dissolving ingredient – but the recipe is about 75% sugar, so you have been warned: eat in moderation.
I bought Sam Bilton’s book First Catch Your Gingerbread late last year and have wanted to do something gingery ever since. If you haven’t got it yet, you should; it’s a really thoroughly researched, well written and accessible read which covers the history of gingerbread not just in Britain but the rest of Europe as well as Asia too. Plus it has loads of recipes to try out, from sweet to savoury and modern to ancient. Most of the info for this post comes from her, so thank you Sam!
When did people start eating ginger?
I don’t have an answer to that.
In fact, I’m not sure anyone does really. Ginger has been used in food for millennia: the Romans had a dish called tractomelitus which was a paste of honey and ginger and could be used in sweet and savoury dishes. Apicius, the 1st century writer, also lists ginger among the spices that should be kept in every kitchen store cupboard, along with myrtle berries and Indian spikenard (I don’t know why I’m telling you this; I’m sure these are everyday staples for all of us, right?)
Ginger was also used in medicinal remedies. According to ancient Greek thought, the body was made up of four humors: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. Sickness was caused by one of these humors becoming unbalanced, and there were certain foods that could redress the balance because they stimulated the production of specific humors. Galen, the 2nd century physician who developed the 4 humor theory, stated that ginger could help reduce the amount of phlegm in the body, for example.
Ginger was thought to increase the amount of blood in the body. This isn’t a completely illogical conclusion to make; being hot and spicy, fresh ginger could cause the skin to flush slightly red when eaten raw. And, because the human mind has always loved the gutter, people throughout time have associated this physiological reaction to carnal attraction. Yes, ginger earned its place as an aphrodisiac fairly early on; the 1st century Persian physician Avicenna recommended mixing ginger and honey into a thick, sweet paste as a cure for impotence and by the 13th century the intriguingly named “Sultan’s Sex Potions” by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi included a ginger-based recipe to “strengthen the sperm and invigorate[s] intercourse.”
Okay, but what about the origins of gingerbread?
You’re not going to like this either, but yet again, I have no answer.
That’s partly down to etymology. The word ‘gingerbread’ isn’t to do with baking; our English word has roots in Old French gingebras which has roots in Latin zingebra: ginger – nothing to do with bread at all. Even more confusingly, once we had the word ‘gingerbread’ it wasn’t used as a description for one specific type of food, but rather alluded to any kind of preserved ginger treat: cakes, biscuits, sweets, pastes and sugarwork. Finally, and just as confoundingly, some of the earliest gingerbread recipes we have don’t contain any ginger.
A 14th century recipe for gingerbread in Curye on Inglysch gives a delicious recipe using breadcrumbs and honey – but is conspicuous in its omission of ginger. Similarly, a 15th century manuscript for ‘Gyngerbrede’ includes spices such as saffron, pepper and cinnamon – but again, no ginger.
These recipes (as well as others that contained ginger) were often made in large slabs which then sliced into strips or lozenges, rather than baked as individual cakes. In fact, they often weren’t baked at all, meaning that the texture was a sticky, treacle-tart like consistency rather than a hard biscuit.
Some gingerbreads were more like sweets – a 14th century recipe for ‘Pynite‘ (pine nut tarts) has a ‘gingerbread’ filling which is essentially a toffee made from honey and spices.
By the 16th century, banquets had become fashionable for the rich. Contrary to every historical film where Henry VIII tears into chicken legs with his bare hands and rich ladies bat their eyelids over plates of unidentified meat, banquets were sweet-only affairs and referred to a particular course rather than the entire meal itself. These sugar banquets, laden with marzipan constructions, candied fruits, crystallised flowers and sugared nuts, were an opportunity to demonstrate the skill of the household cooks as well as the vast wealth of the host.
Why ‘white gingerbread’? Can you answer that at least?
Yes!
It’s at banquets that we find the type of gingerbread I’ve attempted here. By the 16th century there were two main types: red gingerbread (often a dough like mixture containing breadcrumbs) and white gingerbread (a marzipan/sugarpaste combination). Red gingerbread included sandalwood which gave it a deep red colour, whereas white gingerbread used the whitest sugar a cook could source, hence the name. Today’s experiment, which is in the 1591 work A Book of Cookrye by the anonymous ‘A.W.’ is of the white variety.
To make White Ginger Bread
Take Gumma Dragagantis half an ounce, and steep it in rosewater two daies, then put thereto a pound of sugar beaten and finely serced, and beate them well together, so that it may be wrought like paste, then role it then into two Cakes, then take a fewe Jordain almonds and blaunch them in colde water, then dry them with a faite Cloth, and stampe them in a morter very finely, adding thereto a little rosewater, beat finely also the whitest Sugar you can get and searce it. Then take Ginger, pare it and beat it very small and serce it, then put in sugar to the almonds and beat them togither very well, then take it out and work it at your pleasure, then lay it even upon one of your cakes, and cover it with an other and when you put it in the mould, strewe fine ginger both above and beneath, if you have not great store of Sugar, then take rice and beat it small and serce it, and put it into the morter and beat them altogither.
A Book of Cookrye, ‘A. W.’
Making 16th century gingerbread
First of all, I was surprised to see that gum tragacanth was used. I’d only seen it in the specialities section of supermarkets with the likes of glycerin and had therefore assumed it was a relatively modern invention. Perhaps in its highly refined powdered form it it, but it appears the Tudors were well aware of gum tragacanth and its benefits to sugar modelling.
Truth be told, I wasn’t sure what it did. A quick Google threw up some worrying results to do with leatherwork and cigar-making and I almost backed out of this experiment. Once I read a few more pages I saw that as well as being used for some pretty macho activities, gum tragacanth was also used in cake decorating to make sugarpaste more elastic and malleable.
It’s likely that the gum tragacanth used in the recipe was in a more solid form than the fine white powder I had, hence the instructions to leave it steeping in rose water for two days, presumably to soften it. As it was, I ended up leaving my powder to absorb some rose water for 1 day, by which time it had swollen to breadcrumb sized granules and could be pressed into a hard paste with the back of a spoon.
The sugar paste was very straightforward and identical to the kind of sugar paste you get on Christmas cakes (only, ironically, without glycerin – have I used ironically correctly? Probably not.) Once it was made I split it in two and sandwiched a delicious paste of ground almonds, icing sugar and fresh ginger between the two halves. Then it was time to set it in a mould.
Gingerbread moulds were an artwork in themselves. Often quite large, intricate and carved from wood, they would be left by the fireplace to allow the gingerbread inside to set. This presented me with two main problems: one, I didn’t possess a large, intricate gingerbread mould and two, I didn’t have a fire.
Always resourceful, I shaped my gingerbread in what I did have: a silicon cake tin, shaped like a dinosaur. I think it was a Stegosaurus. Instead of a fire I popped it into my boiler cupboard and left it to dry out over a day or two. Hey, it wasn’t authentic but I got points for effort.
Once it had completely dried out I turned my gingerbread out and daubed it with edible gold paint. Tudor sugarwork, including gingerbread, was impressive not just because of the fiddly shapes, but because they were often beautifully gilded with gold leaf and suchlike. Once I was finished my steggy shone like the regal gingery reptile it was.
And there it was! It looked great and tasted good too. The icing shell was toothachingly sweet (and perhaps a tad too thick) but the filling was amazing. Fresh ginger and creamy almonds combined well to make a tangy, punchy frangipane like filling that I could have eaten all day. As it was, the block I made was too large for one person to finish in one sitting, but these could work well in smaller sizes – perhaps made in chocolate moulds.
If you don’t feel you’ve wasted enough of your time reading through my nonsense and have another 10 minutes you never want back, why not head over to my Youtube channel to have a look at the process in full glorious technicolour?
E x
White Gingerbread
100g or 1/2 cup icing sugar (plus an extra spoonful)
25g or 1/8 cup blanched almonds
A medium piece of ginger (about the size of your thumb.)
Teaspoon of rose water
Teaspoon gum tragacanth
50ml or 1.6 fl. oz. water
- Put the gum tragacanth in a bowl and add half of the rose water. Leave it to sit for 12 – 24 hours to allow the tragacanth to absorb all the rose water.
- After the tragacanth has absorbed the rose water, sieve the icing sugar into a bowl and add the water and tragacanth. Knead to a solid, smooth ball of icing.
- Grind the almonds in a pestle and mortar. Transfer to a bowl.
- Peel the ginger and crush it to a pulp in the pestle and mortar, along with the remaining rose water.
- Combine the ginger and almonds and add a spoon of icing sugar and combine to form a stiff paste.
- Split the icing ball in two and roll out into two discs.
- Spread the almond paste on one of the discs and then place the other disc on top, sealing them together.
- Push the gingerbread into a mould and leave to set in a dry place for 24 hours or until it has gone hard.
- Turn out and decorate with edible gold or whatever you fancy.
When do you add the other half of the rose water?
Oh whoops sorry – you add half to the icing and half to the almond mixture. Will update later. Thanks for letting me know!
There is an even simpler recipe, “To make white Ginger-bread”, in John Murrell’s 1617 “A Daily Exercise for Ladies and Gentlewomen”. It says, “Talk half a pound of Marchpane Past made with Almonds, Rose-water and Sugar, and a spoonefull of Aqua vita, season it very hot with Ginger, mould it up stiffe, rowle it thin, and print it with your moulds.” One could roll out the paste (thin), cut it into squares, and then press a design into those shapes.
Thank you! I wasn’t aware of this version, very interesting.
Brilliant stuff!