- When it is kept
- All season
- Where it fits in the year
- All through the season
The word gingerbread first meant preserved ginger and later a cake made with honey and spice. The German name is Lebkuchen and the French is pain d’épices. Gingerbread was sold at medieval fairs, and Toruń in Poland has made it since the 1200s.1 Lebkuchen bakers are recorded in Ulm in 1296 and in Nuremberg in 1395. Nuremberg Lebkuchen now has legal protection, so it must be made in the city.2
The Brothers Grimm printed "Hansel and Gretel" in 1812. In their story the house is made of bread, with a cake roof and sugar windows. It is not gingerbread.3,4 Decorated gingerbread houses are said to have begun in Germany in the early 1800s, after the Grimm book. Food historians disagree, and some say the houses already existed.5,4
Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera "Hansel and Gretel" first played on December 23, 1893, in Weimar, conducted by Richard Strauss. The witch’s house in it is a gingerbread house.6 German-speaking settlers in Pennsylvania are said to have brought the house custom to America.5
A story with no record behind it
It is said that Queen Elizabeth I had gingerbread figures made to look like her guests. A historian quoted in TIME tells it, with no source from the time.7
A hoax
A 1963 book claimed that "Hansel and Gretel" was based on a real event. Its author later admitted it was a hoax.3