Renaissance Gingerbread Recipes

Authentic Renaissance Recipes For Making Gingerbread Sweetmeats

Renaissance gingerbread recipes make a gingerbread that was once a highly prized confection quite unlike today's gingerbread.

Early gingerbread was more like a crisp, sweet candy and there were many variations, some of which contained no ginger at all.

These sweetmeats were often formed or molded (printed) in various shapes before being dried or baked. Some gingerbread was decorated with comfits and gilded with gold leaf before serving at royal banquets.

Try these Renaissance gingerbread recipes for your next banquet. The lords and ladies at your house will love it.

If you have difficulty reading the Early-Modern-English style of writing, or you need to shed light on any outdated ingredient names and cooking terms, please refer to...

The Renaissance Dessert Recipes Glossary

To make Ginger-bread

Take three ftale Manchets grated and flifed, then put to them half an Ounce of Cinamon, as much Ginger, half an Ounce of Licoras and Anifeeds together, beat all thefe and fearce them, and put them in with half a Pound of fine Sugar, boil all thefe together with a quart of Claret, ftirring them continually till it come to a ftiff Pafte, then when it is almoft cold, mould it on a Table with fome fearced Spice and Sugar, then bake it in what fhape you pleafe.

Another fort of Ginger-bread

Take half a pound of fweet Almonds blanched and beaten, half a pound of fine Flower firft dried in an Oven, one Pound of fine Sugar, what forts of Spices you pleafe, beaten and fearced, and alfo Seeds, beat all thefe together with two Eggs, both Yolks and Whites, then mould it with flower and Sugar together, and fo bake it in what fhape you pleafe.

To Make Almond Ginger-Bread

Take a little Gum-Dragon and lay it in fteep in Rofewater all night, then take half a Pound of Jordan Almonds blanched and beaten with fome of that Rofewater, then take half a pound of fine Sugar beaten and fearced, of Ginger and Cinamon finely fearced, fo much as by your tafte you may judg to be fit; beat all there together into a Pafte, and dry it in a warm Oven or Stove.