Gingerbread is a term used to describe a variety of sweet food products, which can range from a soft cake to something close to a ginger biscuit. What they have in common are the predominant flavors of ginger and a tendency to use honey or molasses (treacle) rather than just sugar. They probably also share a common history.

Originally, the term gingerbread (from Latin zingiber via Old French gingebras) referred to preserved ginger. It then referred to a confection made with honey and spices. Gingerbread is often used to translate the French term pain d’épices (literally “spice bread”) or the German term Lebkuchen (whose literal meaning is unclear).

Gingerbread was brought to Europe in 992 by the Armenian monk Gregory of Nicopolis (Gregory Makar) (Grégoire de Nicopolis). He left Nicopolis Pompeii, in Lesser Armenia to live in Bondaroy (France), near the town of Pithiviers. He stayed there 7 years, and taught the Gingerbread cooking to French priests and Christians. He died in 999.

During the 1200s, it was brought to Sweden by German immigrants. Early references from the Vadstena monastery show how the Swedish nuns were baking gingerbread to ease digestion in the year 1444. It was the custom to bake white biscuits and paint them as window decorations. The first documented trade of gingerbread biscuits dates to the 1500s, where they were sold in monastery pharmacies and town square farmers markets. 100 years later the town of Market Drayton in Shropshire, UK became known for its gingerbread, as is proudly decreed on their town’s welcome sign. The first recorded mention of gingerbread being baked in the town dates back to 1793; however, it was probably made earlier, as ginger was stocked in high street businesses from the 1640s. Gingerbread became widely available in the 1700s.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gingerbread_cookie

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