15th Century Gingerbread

The thing I really enjoy about historic cooking is that it lets you directly experience just a small slice of what it was like to live at that time. Recipes are time capsules that capture the popular flavours of the day. But they also reflect how people viewed their food and what ingredients they considered important.

Old recipes let you reach back through time and share a moment with someone who lived hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. A friend once described it as ‘tasting antiques’.

Today I wanted to explore this idea through my favourite historic recipe for gingerbread – or gyngerbrede as it was spelled at the time. The recipe is from Harley manuscript 279, an English cookbook written about 1430.

My modern interpretation of this recipe is at the bottom of this post, so you can create it yourself!

1430 puts this recipe towards the later part of the Middle Ages. Henry VI was King of England. The Hundred Years War with France was in its 93rd year. The bubonic plague had ripped Europe apart just 70 years earlier.

Manorialism was the dominant social system, splitting society into those who fight – the knights who were also the landlords of the large manorial estates, those who work – the peasants who worked the manorial land and were tied to their lords, and those who pray – the monks. But there was also a growing merchant class of freemen living in towns. People who had no lord and made their living plying their trades, often through the increasingly powerful guilds.

Take a quart of hony & ſethe it & ſkeme it clene. Take safroun pouder pepir & þrow þer on. Take gratyd brede & make it ſo chargeaunt þat it wol be ylechyd. þen take pouder canelle & ſtraw þer on ynow. þen make yt ſquare lyke as þ’ wolt leche yt. Take when þou leckyſt hyt an caſte box a leves a bouyn yſtykyd þer on, on clowys. And ȝyf þ’ wolt haue it red coloure it wt saunderys y now.

My translation:

Take a quart of honey and seethe [boil] it and skim it clean. Take saffron and powdered pepper and throw there-on [add to the honey]. Take grated bread [and add it to the honey] and make it so chargeaunt [stiff] so that it would be leched [sliced]. [Roll the gingerbread flat] Then take powdered cinnamon and straw [sprinkle] there on now. Then make it square like as thou [you] would slice it [i.e. slice it into squares to the size that you like]. Take when thou likest it cast box leaves above stuck there on [with] cloves [i.e. after slicing decorate each piece with a box leaf using a clove as a pin]. And if thou would have it red colour it with sandalwood now.

You will probably notice a few things. Firstly, the recipe doesn’t actually include any ginger!

Medieval recipes were written by professional cooks employed by kings and lords for other professional cooks. Partly they were meant to record the favourite meals of the monarch so that new cooks could learn them, and partly they were to show off their wealth to other monarchs by advertising the expensive foods they were eating.

As such medieval recipes don’t usually include ingredient volumes, preparation instructions, or cooking times, and sometimes omit obvious ingredients entirely. The expectation was that the cook reading the recipe would be experienced and would know what amounts of ingredients taste good together, how to cook them, and that gingerbread should include ginger.

Another possibility is that the term ‘gingerbread’ was being used generically to refer to any hotly spiced, bread-based, slice. But then there are other medieval English gingerbread recipes almost identical to this one that do include ginger as an ingredient. And given the name of the recipe I’m inclined to think that ginger was simply omitted as an ingredient by the cook for brevity.

Secondly – the recipe isn’t at all what we would consider gingerbread today. It’s essentially just a breadcrumb and honey mixture that is allowed to set. Unlike our modern baked biscuit this is more like a confectionary. Soft, moist, a little bit tacky, and chewy.

While there was some variety in what spices were added, this breadcrumb and honey mixture was the standard gingerbread recipe throughout Europe at this time.

Honey had been the standard food sweetener used in Europe for millennia, and honey cakes similar to this recipe go all the way back to ancient Egypt and Greece about 4000 years ago. While sugar had been available in Europe since Roman times, it was being imported from Asia and Muslim territories in the Mediterranean and Africa – making it too expensive to use in the volumes required for modern baking.

A variant of this traditional recipe it is still made today in Germany and parts of Eastern Europe in the form of lebkuchen.

The modern English gingerbread that we enjoy today first appeared in cookbooks in the 18th century.

Medieval people had a different relationship to food than what we have today.

Very very briefly….

Medieval medicine was practiced on the concept that health was based on the careful balance of four key bodily fluids (the ‘humors’) – blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.

Each humor was thought to represent one of the four elements that made up the earth (air, fire, earth, and water respectively), and had qualities that were in line with those earthly elements. Blood was considered warm and wet (in line with the air), yellow bile was warm and dry, black bile was cool and dry, and phlegm was wet and cold. Exposure to these qualities in the environment, or due to your lifestyle, or exposure to miasma, caused the body to over produce the corresponding humor.

It was thought that when the humors became unbalanced is when body became sick.

Each humor was associated to certain disease traits, so the disease that you got was determined by which humor was in excess within the body. It was also thought that each humor was associated to a particular mental state.

So, for example, a cold wet English winter will cause your body to produce more phlegm as this humor is associated with water and the properties wet and cold.

A small imbalance in phlegm would bring on a low mood, perhaps causing depression. If left unchecked a larger imbalance in phlegm would lead to getting a cold, pneumonia, or arthritic pain.

Steps would need to be taken to reballance the humors!

Excess phlegm could be countered by eating spicy hot foods, as the hot spices promoted blood and yellow bile – bringing equilibrium back to the body and thus curing your ailments.

Infact Bald’s læce-boc (‘leech book’ – leech meaning ‘medical’ or ‘doctor’ in old English) written in the 10th century – and the oldest surviving complete English medical text – has several remedies against ailments caused by phlegm that include ginger as an ingredient. Including for a runny nose, hiccups, and chills.

With ginger, pepper, and cinnamon in the mix, this 1430s gingerbread would have been considered by the medieval people as a medicine and a preventative for disease as much as it was a tasty treat!

It could have been offered to those who were ill, and would have been taken during the winter months to stave off disease, in the same way we might take vitamins today.

But further too this, of the four humors, the one you really wanted to have a slight imbalance in was blood. Blood was associated with sanguine moods, and a small excess in blood made people happy, social, amorous, active, and generous. All desirable traits.

And the Medieval Europeans took this very seriously. There were two hot spice mixes that they used with almost everything – powder douce (a ginger and cinnamon based powder), and powder fort (a pepper-based powder). Having pasta? Better cover that with powder douce. Fried vegetables? Yep, powder douce that too! And you couldn’t possibly eat mushrooms without powder fort!

The use of these hot spice powders was so prolific that other cultures noticed it. The Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook, written in the 13th century by Islamic Moorish cooks, noted that:

There are others who sprinkle ground pepper over the food when it is cut for eating; this is a practice of the Christians and Berbers. And cinnamon and lavender especially are sprinkled upon food on the plate before eating, but that is in particular dishes, not in all.

This 15th century gingerbread recipe being hotly flavoured and moist would make it perfect for promoting blood within the body – and would have almost certainly have been viewed as something that fortified the mind, imparted a sense of self-assurance, and vitality.

But one must be careful to eat gingerbread in moderation… too much blood could potentially leave you hyperactive, hysterically happy, or a sex fiend….

So gingerbread kept you healthy, gave you great self esteem, and is delicious, so everyone must have been eating it right?…. Probably not.

The spices needed to make this gingerbread recipe were reasonably expensive.

In 1430s London 100 grams of:

• ginger cost 2.6 pence,
• pepper cost 4 pence,
• Saffron cost a massive 40.13 pence.

Then we have the peasantry. Some peasants could become reasonably wealthy, earning upwards of £5 a year. But the majority were not. Most peasants weren’t paid. They were tenants of the land they worked. They lived off their produce, a portion of which they paid to the lord of the manor as rent. They also worked the landlord’s land as rent.

A peasant could earn money by selling excess produce (if they had any), or perhaps by selling crafts during the winter months, or some may have found some paid employment through their lord. But money for the average peasant was hard to come by.

So the average peasant or craftsman was unlikely to be eating gingerbread on a whim. They simply didn’t have the money to be using teaspoons of ginger or pepper in baking all that often.

They absolutely would have been buying ginger, pepper, and cinnamon, though. But in smaller amounts to use as medicine or in the powders sprinkled onto food mentioned above.

I suspect that this is why we associate gingerbread and other spiced foods with Christmas today. This wasn’t something the majority of the population could just eat. It was a delicacy that had to be saved for. Something only used for cooking during times of celebration.

But for those who could afford it gingerbread was a favourite!

Recipes for gingerbread appear in several royal cookery books from the Middle Ages.

And in Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’, written around 1390, the retainers of Sir Thopas present the knight with gingerbread to fortify him before fighting the giant Sir Olifaunt, perhaps hinting that this dish was a favourite amongst the knights to give them strength before a battle.

They fette (prepared) him first the sweat wine.

And mead also in a maslin (cup shaped pan).

And royal spices;

Of gingerbread that was full fine,

And licorice, and also cumin.

With sugar that is so true.

While slightly after the Middle Ages, Queen Elizabeth 1st is said to have invented gingerbread men – and would famously give them out to courtiers and visiting dignitaries decorated in their likeness.

And Shakespeare references gingerbread in Loves Labour’s Lost

An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy ginger-bread.

In 1487 Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III gave out 4000 pieces of lebkuchen (a German variant of this recipe) stamped with his portrait to the children of Nuremburg to try and boost his public relations. And in 1643 Nuremburg established the Gingerbread Guild which controlled the production of gingerbread in the city.

And with that we have unpacked the time capsule that is the 1430s gingerbread recipe!

A relatively expensive spiced slice. Something that was thought of to be a cure for disease, and which imparted a feeling of happiness and strength. It was very popular treat. The nobility, who could afford to regularly cook with such spices, loved it and used it to flatter dignitaries and build relationships. But even the peasantry probably indulged in a little gingerbread from time to time!

SO LETS MAKE IT!

You’ll need:

• breadcrumbs – 150 grams
• honey – 250g grams
• ginger – 2 teaspoons
• black pepper – 1/4 teaspoon
• saffron – about 12 strands, crushed
• Cinnamon – a pinch or two
• Red food colouring or powdered sandal wood

Add the honey to a saucepan and add the ginger, black pepper, and saffron. If you can find sandal wood add that now as well, but as the medieval recipe is only adding this for colour you could substitute for a dash of red food colouring. Bring it to the boil over a low heat and mix thoroughly.

Take the honey off the heat and allow to sit for a minute or two. This lets the saffron diffuse into the mixture.

Return the mixture to the heat and bring back to the boil. Remove it again and stir in the breadcrumbs. The amount of breadcrumbs you will need depends on how dry the crumbs are, but 150 grams seems about right. Keep adding crumbs until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan and forms a ball. You are looking for a texture much like a modern gingerbread mix. If it still looks wet add more crumbs.

Roll the mixture flat. I usually do this between two pieces of baking paper and roll it to about 0.25 – 0.5 cm thick. Sprinkle cinnamon over it and cut it into squares. Allow the gingerbread to set overnight – I usually do this in the fridge. It will dry and stiffen while it sets.

To be faithful to the original recipe you can decorate each slice with a box leaf pinned on with a clove, but box leave are poisonous and I personally don’t do this.