[Sca-cooks] Gilded gingerbread query

[Elise Fleming]

David/Cariadoc wrote:

>I wanted to ask if you could perhaps shed any light on the origin of 
>the phrase "to gild the gingerbread?" and whether, to your knowledge, 
>gold leaf is still much used as food decoration?

Well, gilding of gingerbread goes back at least to Plat and May and
probably before them since both say to gild the gingerbread.  Seems to me
there still is a bit of gold leaf used in the fancy high-end bakery and
confectionary business.  I have a 1993 Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium
on Food and Cookery which has an article by Carole Bloom on "Decorating
Pastries and Confections with Gold".

Alys Katharine

Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
http://home.netcom.com/~alysk/