Things You Should Know About Gingerbread

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Gingerbread is more than just a collection of spices, sugar, and flour transformed into crispy cookies and coffee flavorings. It's also part of children's stories, an element of fairy tale lore, and a staple among Christmas treats. This sweet and spicy cookie chameleon takes on many shapes, including the ever-charming gingerbread man and whimsical, hand-decorated houses that are taken so seriously, they have their own national building contests. More than just a recipe, gingerbread is a part of Western culture that evokes nostalgia and warm memories, no matter what form it takes.

So where did gingerbread come from, and how did it become an official taste of tradition of the holiday season? It's existed for centuries, evolving through a series of archaic recipes before settling into the snappy, flavorful bake we know and love today. But it wasn't always the feel-good treat it's become over the years. It's time you got to know gingerbread a little better and learned its secrets, lore, and what makes it such a reliable seasonal comfort to so many people around the world.

Ginger may be one of the most used spices in your baking rack, but it hasn't always been so available. According to Vegetable Facts, ginger originally appeared in Southern China and per McCormick Science Institute, it was used medicinally to help with digestion. Its presence spread westward as intercontinental trade advanced, and ginger eventually asserted itself in Europe. Ginger People explains that in the 1400s, the root was so expensive that a pound of ginger cost the same as a single sheep. The implication is that sheep were very valuable, though the exchange rate of sheep to dollars to ginger seems to have been lost to the sands of time.

Though ginger has other culinary uses, its popularity as baking spice helped grow the gingerbread phenomenon. As the website Baking Bites explains, fresh or powdered ginger can be used in baking this holiday morsel, though powdered is an easier option.

For all its glittering charm and sugary sweetness, gingerbread takes a turn for the creepy when it becomes a character or setting in stories meant for children, of all people. In the classic Grimm Brothers' fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel," the children in the title are lured to their fate by a gingerbread house occupied by a witch who uses her baked home to make the siblings plump enough to eat. And in "The Gingerbread Man," a baking cookie comes to life and gives chase to a series of characters before being snapped up by a greedy fox.

Why so dark, gingerbread? According to All Things Interesting, the inspiration for Hansel and Gretel may have been a famine in the 1300s, during which parents were rumored to have eaten their own children. And Smithsonian explains a trend of runaway food stories, possibly stemming from a tale called "The Fleeing Pancake" that was adapted through the years. If there's a lesson in all this gingerbread-inspired violence, it may be that the sweetest of things can hold dangers untold, and blindly trusting appearances is never a good idea.

For more than 20 years, Starbucks has been delighting customers with annual re-introductions of its holiday drink line-up, with new flavors stepping forward and older options retiring to the gallery. The ubiquitous Pumpkin Spice Latte that inspired a cultlike following was once accompanied by the Gingerbread Latte, a warm and familiar alternative to all that aggressive pumpkin spiciness. But the famous red holiday cups no longer feature a gingerbread quaff, a fact that Snopes.com reports is due to the drink's waning popularity. Though savvy Starbuckers can still order one, the celebratory spotlight doesn't shine on this spicy sip anymore. As is sometimes the Starbucks way, the Gingerbread Latte may make a glorious return to the happy holiday collection. For now, the elder statesman of Christmas coffee remains at the back of the menu.

Starbucks fans who long to have gingerbread gracing their favorite coffee can take comfort in knowing that gingerbread coffee is available in a home version of beans and grounds. It may take a little doing to recreate the original latte wonder, but the reward is worth the effort, especially for gingerbread devotees who'll do anything for their beloved brew.

It makes sense that gingersnaps and gingerbread are related. After all, gingersnaps are an iteration of the spices used in traditional gingerbread. Gingersnaps even have their own designated national day, July 1, which is separate from days commemorating other gingerbread treats. Gingerbread Day is June 5 and Gingerbread House Day is December 12, for anyone keeping track.

Gingersnaps also have a history of their own that branches off from the history of gingerbread. Food website The Nibble makes the distinction of gingersnaps as a crisper, round version of the original softer and multi-shaped gingerbread cookies that originated in Lebkuchen, Germany. According to the Museum of the American Revolution, gingersnaps were associated with Muster Day, a post-Revolutionary War occasion where new soldiers were recruited and fed gingersnaps as a celebratory snack. Gingersnaps also go by the name ginger biscuits and ginger nuts and can vary in thickness, depending on the recipe and the region in which they're made. When it comes to gingerbread, variety is a tasty prospect.

Quaint cookie-based gingerbread houses were the models for architects to create houses with charming structures that call to mind fairy tale dwellings transported to a modern era. Per Apartment Therapy, gingerbread-style homes are Victorian-style houses marked by whimsical design elements like sloping roofs and lacy woodwork trim. This style hit its stride in America in the mid-1900s, the result of travelers to Haiti having been entranced by the prevalence of gingerbread homes. According to Apartment Therapy's article, vivid colors and quaint personalities for these houses earned them the name gingerbread houses in the mid-20^th century, a description that remains as a quick and easy adjective.

The ornate visuals of gingerbread houses and their artful structures make them a stand-out in the world of real estate. As Cad Details Blog points out, the introduction of the scroll saw into the world of woodcutting made it possible to create the intricate trims and arches that gingerbread houses are known for. It's easier to make them out of cookies, but the movement gets an A for effort, and for its creations lasting through the decades.

The name gingerbread makes it sound like ginger is the only star of the show. In actuality, it takes a small team of spice flavors to provide the profile that we know as gingerbread. Though it may vary from recipe to recipe, the basic formula according to My Food Job Rocks is a blend of ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, anise, cardamom, and molasses. That sounds like a lot of things for something that only puts ginger in the title. University of Wyoming offers a breakdown of what each of these flavors contributes and adds allspice to the list. It all combines to create the warm complexity of a taste that's evolved through the centuries.

No matter how many elements it takes to create, gingerbread is a treat that contains something a singular flavor profile. Ask five different people what chocolate tastes like, and they'll have five different answers, from dark to milk to white. But with gingerbread, the flavor inspired by the name exists as a unique taste that means only one thing: gingerbread, plain and simple.