A Short History of Gingerbread (2024)

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A Short History of Gingerbread? ›

According to the French legend, gingerbread was brought to Europe in 992 by the Armenian monk, later saint, Gregory of Nicopolis (Gregory Makar). He lived for seven years in Bondaroy, France, near the town of Pithiviers, where he taught gingerbread cooking to priests and other Christians.

Food historians trace the origins of gingerbread back to the ancient Egyptians, who used it for ceremonial purposes. The ancient Greeks followed suit with the first known recipe for gingerbread around 2400 B.C.

​Superstitions about gingerbread flourished in the 17th century. Witches supposedly made gingerbread figures, ate them, and thereby caused the death of their enemies. Dutch magistrates went so far as to declare baking or eating molded cookies illegal.

Queen Elizabeth I hired her own gingerbread baker to feed her craving for the sweet. She commanded the baker to make gingerbread men in the likenesses of visiting dignitaries and her suitors.

In the late 17th century, gingerbread became associated with Christmas. Russian bakers prepared gingerbread men and women, usually as replicas of those people attending parties. Gingerbread houses were introduced about 200 years later, when the Grimm brothers wrote Hansel and Gretel. A new holiday tradition was born.

According to certain researchers, the first gingerbread houses were the result of the well-known Grimm's fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel" in which the two children abandoned in the forest found an edible house made of bread with sugar decorations.