Gingerbread - The Georgian Way And My Sunday Photo

Gingerbread?  This name comes from the Latin zingiber.  Ooh, I love the sound of that - zingiber!  It seems that gingerbread started off in Germany then went to Sweden, and was taken up by the English in Elizabeth I's time in the form of gingerbread men.  

This is a recipe from the online course on Royal Food that I did recently with the University of Reading.  Gingerbread was a staple of the Georgian Christmas table, though many of the foods and festivities had become muted since Medieval times.  It was originally seen as very festive (i.e. only for festivals) due to the expensive spices, but by this time spices were cheaper thus more available to the ordinary folk of England. 



Makes about 22 


ingredients:


340g. of treacle

113g. of brown sugar

9g. ground ginger

7g. ground cloves

7g. ground mace - I had to buy it and grind it myself

7g. ground allspice

7g. ground nutmeg

7g. whole caraway seeds

7g. whole coriander seeds

half an egg - check my notes for info on this

454g. butter, melted

500g. plain flour



Method:


Place all the ingredients except the flour into a large mixing bowl

Mix them well together

Add the flour in increments - the recipe says it will form a stiff paste but this didn't happen for me:=)

You can cut out shapes if the dough does become stiff enough, but otherwise do what I did - just drop it onto the lined baking trays with a big spoon

Bake at 160C for 15-20 minutes - I did mine in 2 lots

Cool on wire racks

Store in the fridge in a sealed container



Notes:


I cracked open one large egg, which weighed 57 grams.  I then whisked it with a fork to combine the yolk and white, and weighed out half so I ended up with about 28g. of egg

The original recipe says it "will knead into a pretty stiff paste".  I added twice the amount of flour that was suggested (half a pound), and the mixture was still incredibly soft, so no gingerbread men or women for me

ingredients

ground spices

all in!

the melted better is in - looks like a pond at this point  

and the flour is stirred in - see, still pretty runny but that's okay    

just spoon them onto the lined tray - yep, they're buttery

spicy and tender  

Best to let them cool down and firm up before eating.  They stayed soft though the recipe says they are good for dunking.  Perhaps leaving the dough in the fridge overnight as the recipe suggests would lead to a stiffer biscuit.  Mr P. was happy with these as is.


This recipe comes from New System of Cookery 1816 by Maria Rundell.

the recipe from the course notes  

my gingerbread man doodle