When my Great-Great-Grandfather Albert Spencer came to Canada in 1913, he brought along his young family and what has become a secret family recipe. He grew up in what is now called the Ashbourne Gingerbread Shop but was then known simply as the Ashbourne Bakery. Ashbourne, a small town in Derbyshire, has been known for its unique gingerbread since at least the 1860ies when an advertisement for the confection was posted in the Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial & General Advertiser. Described once as “a crisp, ginger shortbread biscuit, (it) has a unique, warm, nutty taste that is slightly sweet and never sharply gingery,” (1) the taste is synonymous with Christmas in the Spencer family.

Ashbourne gingerbread is similar to this gingerbread in that it’s a little lighter in colour and rises to become more cookie or biscuit-like as compared to standard gingerbread. It usually isn’t decorated with icing, though. Photo by Ksenia Yakovleva on Unsplash

Upon researching gingerbread for this article, I was surprised to discover that gingerbread has a long and storied history in Europe. The first known recipe for a spiced flat cake, sweetened with honey, comes from the ancient Greeks some 4,400 years ago! The same basic concept can be found across Europe, with many variations. It was allegedly Queen Elizabeth the 1^st of England that began the tradition of cutting and decorating gingerbread cookies to look like people, ordering cookies that resembled the dignitaries who visited her court. This required a thinner, harder cookie, whereas the French pain d’épice is traditionally still made in a loaf form.

French gingerbread, pain d’épice. Photo by Jr R on Unsplash

Although commonly associated with Christmas nowadays, in the past, gingerbread was found year-round at medieval fairs where the shapes would change to reflect the season. Many fall traditions also involve gingerbread, including an old custom from the North of England, which involved a maiden eating a gingerbread man on Halloween night to ensure she’d soon find a suitable husband. Gingerbread cookies shaped like pigs and men are also associated with Bonfire night in England, which takes place every November 5^th. On December 5^th, Dutch children are often given spekulaas and pepernoten, as well as chocolate letters and other gifts by Sinterklaas, as they celebrate Saint Nicholas’ Day or Sinterklaas.

As for gingerbread houses, that tradition was started in Germany in the 1600s but was popularized by the Brothers Grimm story of Hansel and Gretel. Their nemesis, the evil child-eating witch, lived in a house made of gingerbread. The town of Nuremberg in Germany was already famous for its beautifully decorated Lebkuchen. Using wooden moulds that ranged in size from a few inches to three feet across, they would imprint designs on the Lebkuchen before baking and decorating them. The cookies often depicted notable local nobles or religious figures and could even be decorated with extravagant gold leaf.

German Lebkuch Gingerbread. Die Galizischer Lebkuchen sind ein Weihnachtsgebäck. 2013, by Silar https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Galizischer_Lebkuchen_0033.JPG

The story of Ashbourne gingerbread starts at the Ashbourne bakery. It resides at 26 St. John’s Street, Market Square, Ashbourne, Derbyshire, in a remodelled inn built around 1492 (based on a dendrochronological study) and converted into a bakery in 1805. Local legend states that the famous gingerbread recipe came from a French officer who was billeted in Ashbourne as a prisoner of war. According to one source, the officer in question was, in fact, the personal chef to General Rochambeau, who had surrendered to English forces in 1803 after he failed to secure Hispaniola from the rebel Haitians. My 3^rd Great-Grandfather, Henry Tomlinson Spencer Sr., was allegedly given the recipe when he took over the bakery in 1887, the same year Albert Spencer was born.

“Ashbourne Gingerbread Shop (1641), Derbyshire” by The Roaming Picture Taker is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

As the youngest son in the family, Albert decided to brave the journey to Saskatchewan to start a new life as a farmer. I can’t imagine the trip’s difficulty, as he and his wife were travelling with two toddlers in the cramped confines of the steerage class of the RMS Victoria. It was also almost a year to the day after the Titanic had sunk on a similar journey. Among his other jobs, Albert and his brother Henry used their baking skills to help feed the hungry men building the Hudson’s Bay railway in The Pas, Manitoba. When Albert sadly died in 1922, he passed the recipe on to his son Frank Spencer, who passed it on to my grandfather. It’s currently safely in the hands of my grandmother, and my aunt has promised to make me a copy the next time she visits her.

For those not lucky enough to be Spencers, the recipe for Ashbourne gingerbread on the “Foods of England” website will have to do if you want to try to make some of your own. After all, according to Robin Pearson, a distant cousin of mine and the owner of the gingerbread shop back in 1985, “It’s just butter, flour, eggs, Jamaican ginger, and sugar. The secret is in the proportions.”(1)

Ingredients:

9 oz self-raising flour

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tbsp golden syrup

4 oz butter

pinch of salt

4 oz brown sugar

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F/gas 4.
2. Sieve flour, salt, and ginger together.
3. Cream the syrup, butter and sugar together, then stir in the dry ingredients.
4. Knead the mixture onto a floured surface to a smooth dough.
5. Roll out and cut into the shape required.
6. Place on a lined baking tray and bake in the oven for 8-12 minutes, depending on the size of your cookies.
7. They should be dry and crumbly when done. Let cool on a baking rack until room temperature before eating.

Ashbourne Gingerbread, a must-try for over 150 years! Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial & General Advertiser – Saturday 21 July 1860. Located at http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/ashbournegingerbread.htm

Sources:

(1) https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-12-19-8503270982-story.html

Anderson, Lisa. “Gingerbread Crisp, Subtle in Its Traditional Home.” Chicago Tribune, December 18, 1985. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-12-19-8503270982-story.html

Avey, Tori. “The History of Gingerbread.” PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, December 20, 2013. https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-gingerbread/#:~:text=In%20Medieval%20England%2C%20the%20term,with%20honey%2C%20treacle%20or%20molasses.

Hughes , Glen. “Ashbourne Gingerbread.” Foods of England – Ashbourne Gingerbread. Accessed January 25, 2023. http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/ashbournegingerbread.htm.

Hudgins, Sharon. “Gingerbread.” In The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, edited by Darra Goldstein. Oxford University Press, Inc., 2015. https://ezproxy.kpu.ca:2443/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/ouposas/gingerbread/0?institutionId=9473

“The Gingerbread Shop.” Our Ashbourne. Explore Ashbourne Heritage. Accessed January 25, 2023. http://ourashbourne.co.uk/place/the-gingerbread-shop.

Raffael, Michael. “Pain d’épice.” Caterer & Hotelkeeper 192, no. 4282 (July 17, 2003): 40. https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.kpu.ca:2443/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=10732685&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Sources: (1) https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-12-19-8503270982-story.html Anderson, Lisa. “Gingerbread Crisp, Subtle in Its Traditional Home.” Chicago Tribune, December 18, 1985. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-12-19-8503270982-story.html Avey, Tori. “The History of Gingerbread.” PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, December 20, 2013. https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-gingerbread/#:~:text=InMedievalEnglandtheterm,withhoneytreacleormolasses. Hughes , Glen. “Ashbourne Gingerbread.” Foods of England - Ashbourne Gingerbread. Accessed January 25, 2023. http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/ashbournegingerbread.htm. Hudgins, Sharon. "Gingerbread." In The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, edited by Darra Goldstein. Oxford University Press, Inc., 2015. https://ezproxy.kpu.ca:2443/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/ouposas/gingerbread/0?institutionId=9473 “The Gingerbread Shop.” Our Ashbourne. Explore Ashbourne Heritage. Accessed January 25, 2023. http://ourashbourne.co.uk/place/the-gingerbread-shop. Raffael, Michael. “Pain d’épice.” Caterer & Hotelkeeper 192, no. 4282 (July 17, 2003): 40. https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.kpu.ca:2443/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=10732685&site=ehost-live&scope=site.