Witches supposedly made gingerbread figures, ate them, and thereby caused the death of their enemies. The sweet fell so far out of favor that Dutch magistrates declared it illegal to bake or eat the molded cookies. Within a few years of Queen Elizabeth’s death, the gingerbread pendulum had swung to the dark side. Superstitions sprang up that humanoid sweets had demonic powers. The flip side of believing an object will confer good fortune is fearing it will bring bad luck. Young unmarried women ate man-shaped gingerbread figures called “husbands” in hopes of attracting a live husband. Gingerbread rabbits were supposed to increase fertility. Those searching for mates or hoping to ward off evil devoured heart-shaped pieces. Many believed gingerbread in certain shapes was charmed. The common people enjoyed less lavish forms of gingerbread, buying it at fairs and exchanging it as a love token. There were far worse fates than watching the queen decapitate your gingerbread effigy, given that displeasing a Tudor monarch could result in losing your real head. History doesn’t record if a suitor who’d fallen out of favor got no gingerbread or if the queen consumed his gingerbread likeness as a public brush-off. She commanded the baker to make gingerbread men in the likenesses of visiting dignitaries and her suitors. Queen Elizabeth I hired her own gingerbread baker to feed her craving for the sweet. While guild members could make gingerbread all year round, others, even home bakers, had that privilege only on Christmas and Easter. Nuremberg gingerbread bakers formed their own guild and monopolized the sweet. An artist then embellished them icing and real gold flakes for their rich patrons. Bakers, woodcarvers, and painters in Nuremberg created ornate gingerbread figures and edifices. Heads of state used it for self-promotion, distributing sweets stamped with their own images like coins.
More elaborate gingerbread became common in royal courts. English poet and diplomat Matthew Prior celebrates this pedagogical method in verse: Once children learned a letter from a gingerbread hornbook, they were allowed to eat it. This was a cheaper version of the hornbook, a hand-held wooden paddle which paper with lessons was pasted. They either baked it in sheets and cut it into cakes or pressed it into molds carved with images of saints or biblical scenes before baking.Ĭhildren learned the alphabet from a gingerbread slab with letters inscribed on it. They mixed a paste of breadcrumbs, honey, and ginger and rolled it out thin. Monks made gingerbread to feed the hungry and give religious instruction. In the form of cookies or flat cakes, the sweet was used for nourishment, education, and decoration. It morphed into gyngebreed in Middle English and then into gingerbread. The word derives from the Old French gigembras for gingered food. Gingerbread is a misnomer because it was never a bread. In the centuries that followed, the spice spread across Europe and went from rare and expensive to widely available and cheap.
In the 13th century Marco Polo brought it to the West from China. After the Roman Empire fell, ginger all but disappeared from Europe. Though the Romans used ginger for medicinal and culinary purposes, we don’t know if the spice was an ingredient in Saturnalia biscuits. Carousing became caroling and gift-giving recalled the Magi’s offerings to the baby Jesus. As Christianity spread through the Roman empire, religious leaders replaced Saturnalia with Christmas and cleaned up the festivities. Celebrants gobbled down man-shaped biscuits representing the culminating event of Saturnalia-human sacrifice as a gift to appease the gods. The decadent festivities included excessive drinking, eating, and carousing.
Precursors to gingerbread men played a role in the Saturnalia, the Roman winter solstice celebration.
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