[Sca-cooks] gyngerbrede

Johnna Holloway johnnae at mac.com
Wed Sep 9 19:05:49 PDT 2009


There are breads and cakes that contain ginger from all over Europe.
What defines a gingerbread after all? A cake or bread with ginger,  
right?
And again using medievalcookery.com, here's a few examples:

They develop of course into the spice cakes in Germany, as in Das  
Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin.

151 To bake good Lebkuchen. Take first a pound of sugar, a quart of  
clear honey, not quite a third quart of flour, take two and a half  
ounces of cinnamon, one and a half ounces of cloves, two ounces of  
cardamom. Cut the other spices as small as possible, the cinnamon  
sticks are ground as coarsely as possible. Also put ginger therein and  
put the sugar into the honey, let it cook together, put the flour in a  
trough, pour the cardamom into it first, afterwards the ginger and the  
other spices.

In Denmark it's called for in Koge Bog.

LXXIII - A mash of ginger bread. Grate gingerbread finely on a grater.  
Take a pot with good sweet mead and add thereto this grated  
gingerbread. Make sure it's not lumpy. Put it to the fire and let  
cook. Add to it aniseed, whole [karbe], pepper, ginger, a little  
saffron and then taste that it is right. Then serve forth. If you want  
you can also well sprinkle it with sugar.

 From Germany it's called for as an ingredient in the Konigsberg  
manuscript.
As found in the Florilegium.

If you want to make a sauce of gingerbread
Cut it up small as /Pfefferbrot/ and boil it with wine. Pass it  
through a cloth like a pepper sauce and add cinnamon and ginger in  
sufficiency. Boil it in a pan, pour it into the sauce bowl, and  
sprinkle sugar on it.

BTW, here's another English recipe from 1591 A Book of Cookrye

To make white Ginger Bread




Take Gumma Dragagantis half an once, and steep it in rosewater two  
daies, then put therto a pound of Sugar beaten & finely serced, and  
beate them well together, so that it may be wrought like paste, then  
role it then into two Cakes, then take a fewe Jordain almonds &  
blaunch them in colde water, then dry them with a faire Cloth, and  
stampe them in a morter very finelye, adding therto a little  
rosewater, beat finely also the whitest Sugar you can get and searce  
it. Then take Ginger, pare it and beat it very small and serce it,  
then put in sugar to the almonds & beat them togither very well, then  
take it out and work it at your pleasure, then lay it even upon one of  
your cakes, and cover it with an other and when you put it in the  
molde, strewe fine ginger both above and beneath, if you have not  
great store of Sugar, then take Rice and beat it small and serce it,  
and put it into the Morter and beat them altogither.

and as regards did they use fresh or stale bread here's this recipe  
that calls for stale manchets.

This is an excerpt from Delights for Ladies by Hugh Plat.
(England, 1609)


22 - To make Ginger-bread. Take three stale Manchets, and grate them:  
dry them, and sift them thorow a fine sieve: then adde unto them one  
ounce of Ginger being beaten, and as much Cinamon, one ounce of  
Liquorice and Anniseeds beeing beaten together, and searced, halfe a  
pound of sugar; then boil all these together in a posnet, with a quart  
of claret wine, till they come to a stiff paste with often stirring of  
it; and when it is stiffe, mould it on a table, and so drive it thin,  
and put it in your moulds: dust your moulds with Cinamon, Ginger, and  
Liquorice, being mixed together in fine powder. This is your Ginger- 
bread used at the Court, and in all Gentlemens houses at festival  
times. It is otherwise called dry Leach.

Johnnae

On Sep 9, 2009, at 9:25 PM, Marcha wrote:

> Curious question number 1,395:  "Was gyngerbrede made all over  
> Europe during our period?".
> Thank you,
> Bertha
> _______________________________________________




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