It’s autumn, and up here in the Cascade foothills, it’s cold
and raining. The weatherman recently cancelled El Nino and said we’d be going
into a neutral winter, which means I need to get new tires. There’s no way I
can get through a snow event with my current tread depth, a sad fact that
made me buy ingredients for my favorite cold weather comfort food—gingerbread.
Gingerbread is an old sweet. The earliest forms were used
in Egypt for ceremonial purposes. Later, as it traveled to Europe in the 15th century,
it evolved into something very much like modern day rum balls—a molded confection of bread
crumbs, spices and honey.
Take a quart of hony,
& sethe it, & skeme it clene; (simmer a quart of honey and skim the foam)
take Safroun, pouder Pepir, & throw ther-on (add some saffron and powdered
pepper); take grayted Bred, & make it so chargeaunt that it wol be
y-lechyd; (add enough grated bread to make a stiff paste) then take pouder
Canelle, & straw ther-on y-now; (add some cinnamon) then make yt square,
lyke as thou wolt leche yt; take when thou lechyst hyt, an caste Box leves
a-bouyn, y-stykyd ther-on, on clowys. (press it into a mold and let it dry a
few hours)
The molds were deep, highly detailed
and sometimes explicitly bawdy like the small 15th century earthenware molds currently at The Walters Art
Museum in Baltimore. Because honey is hygroscopic, early gingerbread needed to be
thick to hold its shape. By 1650, the English had replaced bread crumbs with
flour and baking molds reflected the ability to create thinner pieces.
In the late Regency, gingerbread molds had morphed into
little more than cookie stamps—although the carving was still intricate.
Cookies ran the gamut from fancy lebkuchen style fruit and
nut extravaganzas to simple, ginger-flavored drops.
Mix three pounds of
flour with half a pound of butter, four ounces of brown sugar, half an ounce of
pounded ginger; then make it into a paste with one pound and a quarter of
treacle (golden syrup) warm.
Despite my interest in the history of gingerbread, I only make one kind. There’s something about the smell of candied fruit that makes
me think of Christmas.
If you’d like to get your own copy of A New System of
Domestic Cookery by A Lady (Maria Eliza Rundell, 1842) google play offers it as
a free e-book.
In The Taming of Lady Honoria, the first book in my erotic serial regency, Honoria has nothing at all
to do with cooking and very little to do with eating. One day, she swears--she'll eat a full meal, but until then, she'll continue to hope for prawn loaves when her mother throws a ball.
Blurb:
Lady Honoria Cavanaugh is as tempestuous as she is
beautiful. When her spoiled demand for a new gown brings her to the attention
of her old childhood friend, Robbie MacGregor, an erotic passion ignites. But
who is Danton, and what does the enigmatic lord want? Two lusty men, a devoted
maid, and a Beauty of Immense Fortune. Who said, "There can be only
one?"
Now I want some gingerbread... Thanks for the link to the cookbook. LOVE looking at those!
ReplyDeleteGo get those tires before you need them!
lol, Kaige--and here I was thinking about you. You are totally the world's best practitioner of google-fu. :)
ReplyDeleteI don't have time to hang out at the tire store, although I guess I don't have time to die either. I'll price them out and think about it after I get some sleep. :(