Food History

Thanks to author Elizabeth Chadwick, the strange no-bake gingerbread from the Regency Gothic testing has finally worked. She had some important observations to make about it, which help make sense of why most of the gingerbread recipes we tested were such abject failures. The most important observation was that not all food was made to be consumed immediately: maturity is a factor in cooking.

At first she was a little worried:

Comes out a bit like marzipan in texture and slightly glossy. … It is entirely edible non-baked but the flavours are very powerful. The black treacle gives it an almost bitter after-taste and the quantity of ginger ensures it’s very hot.

However it’s not unpalateable and while probably an acquired taste, it’s the kind of acquired taste one might develop for very intense dark, bitter chocolate or the strongest of strong cheese. ….

So: A success with caveats. It does work as a no-bake and would be very warming on a cold day.

Then she sent me a second report, confirming very strongly that the ‘no-bake’ interpretation of the recipe was absolutely correct.

Her final comment was:

It definitely gets better as you keep it. It’s dried out more now and become a little crumbly. Texture is turning to half way between cake and biscuit. The flavour has mellowed too - still strong but not quite so much of a blast. So I would think it wasn’t eaten straight from the kitchen, but left to stand for a few days.

Several observations. First: some food was for keeping. Second, if ovens are not mentioned, baking might be an error even if the modern version of the recipe is baked. Finally, early nineteenth century gingerbread is not one thing. Each and every recipe has the potential to be a memory of the fifteenth century or to be adapted to newer cooking technologies. Each and every one might be for eating immediately, or for storage and maturation. Some of the gingerbread recipes are still obscure to me - I can’t make sense of how to cook them without them loking like fertliser or gravel or .. something else. The Old Foodie has promised to take a look at the recipes we used and see if she can work out what happened, but - as I haven’t time to send them to her for a little - this might take a while.

Gingerbread is proving surprising interesting.