The History of Gingerbread Men: From Elizabeth I to The Sad Story of St. Nicholas

The most famous humanoids in the world of pastry making are gingerbread men, flavored cookies that take on human features. The tradition of preparing these biscuits is typically Anglo-Saxon but with their presence in films and TV series they have also landed everywhere in the world. In reality this type of biscuit is prepared for every holiday and consequently the "theme" of the biscuit varies depending on the time of year: it goes from skeletons for Halloween to eggs for Easter but it is at Christmas that they give their best. In addition to the classic men you can see gingerbread houses , reindeer, colored garlands, snowflakes, everything and more prepared with the same recipe as gingerbread men but with different shapes.

Although they are mistakenly associated gingerbread men with our country due to cinematic narration, these cookies are English and have a noble origin, of a rather high rank among other things. Let's see the history of this anthropomorphic dessert as good as it is iconic.

The Story of The Gingerbread Men

Gingerbread men are spiced shortcrust pastry sweets, brown in color, with an unmistakable aroma of cinnamon and of course ginger. Crunchy, crumbly, fragrant, a real delicacy: for many Anglo-Saxons the "scent of Christmas" is precisely that of gingerbread men. The origins of this sweet are nothing short of noble: it was in fact Queen Elizabeth I of England herself who gave life to these creations during one of her banquets.

The last Tudor monarch, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, is known for being one of the most important queens in the history of the United Kingdom. The innovations brought by her politics in the social, artistic and technological fields have however overshadowed her great talent: that of hospitality and cuisine. Elizabeth I became famous among the European nobility of the 1500s for her banquets even before her political skills, thanks to elegant, elaborate preparations, with luxurious and often "modern" dishes.

Gingerbread men were born in a truly lively historical and cultural context: 200 years late, the Renaissance also arrived in England, led by none other than William Shakespeare, Thomas More and Erasmus of Rotterdam. Shakespeare himself was the first author to mention this sweet in a work . In the comedy "Love's Labour's Lost", the English author wrote: "If I had a penny in the world, I'd give it to buy you gingerbread!".

In addition to the cultural renaissance, there is the gastronomic one: from the Americas come spices, vegetables and fruits never seen before, all dishes that the "Virgin Queen" offers to the guests. Elizabeth I was also the first to understand the power of cooking in the world of diplomacy and the gingerbread men must be seen in this light: it is she who asks the court pastry chefs to use simple ingredients and try to make "men" that represent the foreign nobles and the other guests at the queen's court.

The idea is very popular with all the guests who come to the palace, taking the sweets all over Europe. It is no coincidence that there are so many recipes in Northern Europe with the ingredients of these biscuits at their core; the most famous (and successful) is probably that of the Swedish pepparkakor.

With the end of the Tudor reign, gingerbread men also disappear from circulation until 1875, when they reappear thanks to the publication of the story of Saint Nicholas. In this composition a sort of "revisitation of Pinocchio" is narrated, in which the gingerbread man runs away from an elderly couple who want a child. During the journey he repeats a nursery rhyme to humans and animals:

"I ran away from an old woman and an old man, I can run away from anyone, I can run away from you. I can. Run run you won't catch me I'm the gingerbread man"

The story is very macabre and ends with a fox that cleverly manages to capture the protagonist to eat him. The narration does not limit itself to making the protagonist die but makes him scream while he dies, a sort of radio commentary in which he announces what is happening:

"I don't have a quarter of me left… I don't have half of me left…… I don't have three quarters of me left…. They're gone!"

This story immediately becomes very popular but the ending changes depending on the historical period, local traditions and the kindness of parents who want to avoid trauma to their children. The idea of ​​a sweet animated by human features makes its way into the minds of our ancestors in the nineteenth century and becomes the protagonist of a love ritual: gingerbread men become the protagonists of the popular medicine of the time, especially at fairs and amusement parks. They are found in the tents of "witches" and "wizards", among fortune tellers and fortune tellers: they sell them as a love ritual to young women so that they can make future spouses fall in love. The men would have to eat their equivalent of gingerbread, prepared especially for them, and would instantly fall in love with whoever offered it to them.