Gingerbread houses

Gingerbread houses are edible decorations made of ginger-flavored cookie dough, icing, and candies. They originated between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe and spread to other countries as they grew in popularity. The houses were originally so closely associated with the Grimm’s Fairy Tale “Hansel and Gretel” that historians are unclear as to which came first, the fairy tale or the houses. Eventually, gingerbread houses became associated with the Christmas season, resulting in an entire industry of competitions to make and decorate them.

Background

The key ingredient in gingerbread is ginger root, a spice first grown in China about five thousand years ago. It was thought to have both medicinal and magical powers; in the twenty-first century, people still use ginger to help with nausea and stomach-upset. The spice was traded widely along the Silk Road, which introduced it to Europe. Later, it was discovered that ginger could be used to help preserve perishable foods. The precise time that this was discovered is not known, but researchers found a recipe in Greece dated to around 2400 BCE indicating this use.

Early gingerbread recipes called for ginger combined with ground almonds, sugar, other flavorings, and stale breadcrumbs pressed into wooden molds. In the sixteenth century, English bakers replaced the breadcrumbs with flour, and the cookies were decorated with gold gilding or white icing outlines. Food historians credit England’s sixteenth century monarch Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) with being the first to request decorated cookies. She impressed visiting dignitaries to the English court by having cookies decorated to resemble them. Similar cookies became very popular at village fairs during the Middle Ages.

Overview

As early as the fourteenth century, Germans were telling stories of Hansel and Gretel, two children lost in the forest who come across a house made of bread and candy. By the sixteenth century, German bakers began making houses out of gingerbread cookies. Then the house in the story changed from being made of bread to gingerbread. It is unclear whether the fairy tales inspired the houses or the houses inspired a change in the story, but the story of Hansel and Gretel and gingerbread became connected. The popularity of gingerbread houses grew after 1812, when Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm—the Brothers Grimm—published the fairy tale in their collection Children’s and Household Tales.

The Germans called them lebkuchenhaeusle. They were made by cutting rolled gingerbread dough into pieces shaped like individual walls, roofs, and chimneys and attaching them to each other with thick icing. The assembled deep brown cookie house was then decorated with gold and silver foils for the wealthy and white icing for the less well-to-do. Since another ginger-flavored dessert, gingersnap cookies, was already closely associated with Christmas, making gingerbread houses soon became a favorite holiday tradition. Making gingerbread houses became an opportunity for bakers to show off their culinary skills and creativity. Over time, the houses came to be decorated with a variety of candies and cookies attached with icing. The consistent factors in defining a gingerbread house are that it has to include a basic form made of gingerbread cookie dough and all the decorations need to be edible.

Gingerbread house-making did not catch on in all countries, but German immigrants brought the tradition to colonial America. Just as in Europe, the practice became part of Christmas celebrations for people of all ancestries. During the twentieth century, it became common for people to hold gingerbread house baking contests during which participants competed to build the most elaborate or fanciest structure. These competitions sometimes resembled the town fairs of the Middle Ages where the popularity of the gingerbread cookie spread.

In addition to formal competitions, some individual bakers challenge themselves to create elaborate gingerbread structures. Various well-known structures, including the Washington Monument, the White House, and the iconic Smithsonian Museum castle, have been interpreted in gingerbread. Some communities, shopping malls, hotels, bakeries, and public buildings such as the White House have used gingerbread houses as part of their holiday decorating scheme.

The town of Bergen, Norway, creates an entire village called a Pepperkakabyen out of gingerbread for each holiday season with lighted buildings, boats, and other features of a real town. A gingerbread village made by the Marriot Marquis Hotel and displayed at the New York Hall of Science in 2017 held the record at the time for the largest gingerbread village. In 2013, the Traditions Golf Club in Bryan, Texas, created a gingerbread house so large that it needed a legal building permit. The 40,000-cubic-foot structure used 1,080 ounces of ginger and 1,800 pounds of butter to make more than 4,000 gingerbread bricks that were stacked and decorated.

An industry has also arisen around the practice of making gingerbread houses. Contemporary builders can buy tools and kits to make construction easier. The kits range from sets with cookie cutters and pre-packed decorations with recipes and instructions to make and decorate the structure from scratch to prebuilt structures with premade icing and decorations that let non-bakers enjoy gingerbread house construction. The gingerbread house kit industry has also expanded to create kits for Halloween, Easter, and other holidays as well as kits themed to specific famous structures or characters from popular culture.

Gingerbread house-style decor can also be found in actual architecture. The walled town of Dinkelsbuhl, Germany, is among the best known of several towns around the world recognized for having a number of homes and other buildings that resemble classic gingerbread houses. In addition, the elaborate white wooden trim associated with a number of Victorian-style homes has come to be known as gingerbread trim.

Bibliography

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Eschner, Kat. “The Un-Christmassy Origin of Gingerbread Houses.” Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Dec. 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/un-christmassy-origin-gingerbread-houses-180967461/. Accessed 2 August 2021.

“Gingerbread at the White House.” White House Historical Society, www.whitehousehistory.org/galleries/gingerbread-at-the-white-house. Accessed 2 August 2021.

“Gingerbread House.” History, www.history.com/topics/christmas/gingerbread-house-video. Accessed 2 August 2021.

“Gingerbread House History: How the Tradition Was Started.” Best Gingerbread Houses, 28 Sept. 2019, bestgingerbreadhouses.com/gingerbread-house-history/. Accessed 2 August 2021.

Rolek, Barbara. “The History of Gingerbread.” Spruce Eats, 10 Nov. 2019, www.thespruceeats.com/the-history-of-gingerbread-1135954. Accessed 2 August 2021.

Thomson, Julie R. “So THAT’s Why We Have Gingerbread Houses.” Huffington Post, 1 Dec. 2016, www.huffpost.com/entry/history-of-gingerbread-houses‗n‗583ee032e4b0ae0e7cdaef98. Accessed 2 August 2021.

Wilson, Antonia. “A Brief History of the Gingerbread House.” The Guardian, 22 Dec. 2018, www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/dec/22/a-brief-history-of-the-gingerbread-house. Accessed 2 August 2021.