Gingerbread Family with Holiday Treats

About this drawing

Long before a gingerbread family could be cut out of cookie dough in an American kitchen, ginger itself was a luxury. The spice came from Asia along trade routes, and in medieval Europe it cost a good deal. Monasteries, merchant towns, and wealthy households were the places most likely to bake with it.

Germany built a real industry around spiced honey cakes. Nuremberg became famous for its lebkuchen, and bakers there formed their own guild, guarding recipes and carving elaborate wooden molds. Those treats are still a highlight of the city's Christmas market today.

England added a royal touch. Queen Elizabeth I is said to have presented important guests with gingerbread figures made in their likeness, which may be the earliest gingerbread people on record. Later, the Brothers Grimm helped along another tradition with their tale of Hansel and Gretel, whose witch lived in a house made of sweets. German bakers responded with decorated gingerbread houses, and immigrants carried both customs to the United States. American recipes usually call for molasses, which gives the cookies their dark color and chewy bite, along with cinnamon and cloves. A nineteenth-century American story about a runaway cookie, who taunts everyone with "You can't catch me," finished the job of making him a holiday character.

• gingerbread
• cookies
• family
• candy
• holly