Gingerbread Men Cookies Date Back To The Time Of Shakespeare

There are plenty of symbols that signify the beginning of the holiday season — a jolly snowman, mistletoe and holly, and of course a gift-filled sleigh pulled by a small herd of the best-trained wild animals you'll ever see. But among all of these symbols and more is a humble but delicious figures absolutely brimming with spice: the festive gingerbread men. These cheer-inducing little cookie-people are not only an excellent example of showcasing the brilliance of cooking with ginger, but they've also become linked to holiday traditions over time. However, the first gingerbread men weren't made to be shipped off (hopefully intact) to loved ones in the mail, but rather have an origin in the topmost echelon of society in the era of one of the world's greatest playwrights.

Yes, in the same epoch in which William Shakespeare was penning some of the finest English plays of all time, the first gingerbread men were being made and served in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Supposedly, the monarch eponymous of the Elizabethan era would get her cooks to form gingerbread into the images of various courtiers and baked into cookies – cookies which would then be given as gifts to said courtiers as a sort of pleasant surprise. You can decide for yourself whether receiving a gingerbread man version of yourself is a compliment (there's no telling how flattering these depictions could have been), but it certainly strikes as an interesting nascence for a holiday treat that's become so beloved.

While the jury is still out on whether Elizabeth I's courtiers were running as fast as they could to get their hands on a depiction of themselves in gingerbread form, it's also worth remembering that the story of the gingerbread man does not encapsulate the story of gingerbread itself. In fact, gingerbread men represent only a small and relatively recent event in the notably vast history of gingerbread as a whole.

Although ginger's roots (no pun intended) are in southern Asia where the spicy ingredient grows, dessert cakes and loaves containing ginger and various other spices can be traced all the way back to ancient Egypt, specifically around 1500 B.C. where ginger was used to flavor certain honey cakes. However, gingerbread as you know it today would begin to take shape in the medieval period, with the Armenian monk Gregory of Nicopolis coming to France with a recipe for what would become "pain d'épices" in the late 10th century. This, alongside European crusaders returning home with stories of gingerbread garnered from the Mediterranean in the 11th century was enough to get Europe to grasp onto the delight of gingerbread, eventually turning it into what it has become today. So, whether you're baking a fresh loaf of gingerbread, or you just want to make some cheery gingerbread man cookies, you're playing a part in a tradition that goes back eons. Just make sure you honor that tradition properly and pick out the most flavorful ginger.