Gingerbread facts for kids

Gingerbread house

Gingerbread is a word which describes different sweet food products from soft cakes to a ginger biscuit. Ginger and honey (or treacle) rather than only sugar, are usually the common ingredients to all the types of food product. They probably also have the same history.

Etymology
History
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Etymology

Before, gingerbread (from Latin zingiber, then Old French gingebras) meant preserved ginger.

History

Armenian monk Gregory of Nicopolis (Gregory Makar) (Grégoire de Nicopolis) brought ginger bread to Europe in 992. He left Nicopolis Pompeii, in Lesser Armenia to live in Bondaroy (France) and stayed seven years. He showed French priests and Christians how to cook gingerbread. He died in 999 Armenian genocide.

German immigrants brought it to Sweden during the 13th century. Swedish nuns baked gingerbread to help indigestion in the year 1444. The custom was to bake white biscuits and paint them as window decorations. Records show that gingerbread biscuits were sold in monasteries, pharmacies and town square farmers' markets in the 16th century.