1. Originally gingerbread was made with honey and breadcrumbs

One of the earliest English recipes for gingerbread, written down in the fifteenth century, didn’t actually contain any ginger! Instead bread crumbs or ‘gratyd brede’ were mixed with boiled honey and formed into a stiff paste with saffron and pepper. The gingerbread was then shaped into a square, sprinkled with cinnamon and decorated with box leaves secured with cloves. Sometimes it was also coloured red by adding ‘sanders’ – the finely ground bark of the red sandalwood tree. Later recipes even include liquorice and red wine!

Spices were an expensive rarity and the use of excessive saffron in gingerbread was a way of demonstrating wealth to guests.

3. Children could learn the alphabet using gingerbread letters

By the seventeenth century gingerbread was more accessible to the general population. Honey became replaced by the cheaper alternative of treacle and flour was used in place of breadcrumbs. Gingerbread was still considered a treat to be eaten on special occasions and it was thought to be good luck to eat gingerbread bought at a fair. This form of gingerbread was known as ‘fairings’ and wooden moulds were used to shape edible characters and simple objects. Popular designs included Kings and Queens and the gingerbread alphabet block known as a hornbook, which had the benefit of being both educational and providing a delicious incentive for pupils to learn their letters – each one correctly memorised could be nibbled away. Gingerbread of this period was often decorated with Dutch gold (a mixture of copper and zinc which looks like real gold).

5. The iconic gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel was not made of gingerbread

Gingerbread houses likely originated in Germany between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, spreading to England at some stage in the nineteenth century. In Thomas Hardy’s novel ‘Jude the Obscure’ (1896), the character of Jude Fawley builds gingerbread houses, known as ‘Christminster Cakes’, complete with ‘traceried windows, and cloisters’.

In the popular myth of Hansel and Gretel, the witch lures the unfortunate children into captivity with her irresistible cottage made of gingerbread covered with sweets. However, the original Grimm’s fairy tale describes a house made from bread, with a cake roof and sugar windows but modern retellings increase the sugary temptation by upgrading mere bread to gingerbread.