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Gingerbread has a thousand years of history behind it, and this quiz covers the lot in 49 free questions with answers: the monk said to have carried it to France in 992, the medieval guilds of Nuremberg, Toruń's 13th-century bakers, Elizabeth I's gingerbread men, and the Grimm fairy tale that gave us the gingerbread house. It also gets into the biscuits themselves and the traditions around them: Lebkuchen and Elisenlebkuchen, Swedish pepparkakor, Dutch speculaas and Biscoff, Grasmere gingerbread, molasses in America, Bergen's gingerbread town, the record-breaking houses, the Gingerbread Man's fox, Gingy from Shrek and Mother Ginger in The Nutcracker. It works as gingerbread house trivia for a Christmas party or a holiday classroom, with easy questions up front and hard ones for the bakers at the back. Every answer has been checked against a documented source and each question shows its citation and a short explanation after you answer.
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Q 01Gingerbread is said to have reached Europe in 992 AD via a monk of what nationality?
Armenian
Armenian monk Gregory of Nicopolis settled at Bondaroy in France and, by tradition, taught local Christians to bake gingerbread for seven years before his death in 999.
Q 02Which four flavourings does the standard definition of gingerbread list alongside its sweetener?
Ginger, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon
Ginger, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon are the four flavourings in the usual definition, sweetened with honey or sugar; results range from soft cake to crisp biscuit.
Q 03Originally, the word 'gingerbread' referred to what?
Preserved ginger
Preserved ginger was the original meaning: the word came from Latin zingiber by way of Old French gingebras, and only later attached itself to the spiced cake.
Q 04In 1444, nuns at Vadstena Abbey in Sweden baked gingerbread for what purpose?
To ease indigestion
To ease indigestion — ginger had a long reputation as a stomach settler, so the Vadstena nuns' 1444 gingerbread was medicine first and treat second.
Q 05What was a piece of gingerbread bought at a medieval English fair for a sweetheart called?
A fairing
A fairing was the name for such a gift: fair gingerbread came stamped from wooden moulds and sometimes gilded, hence the phrase "take the gilt off the gingerbread".
Q 06Where were gingerbread biscuits sold when their trade was first recorded in the 16th century?
Monasteries, pharmacies and markets
Monasteries, pharmacies and markets were the first recorded sellers in the 1500s; ginger was a medicine before it was a treat, so apothecaries stocked it.
Q 07The gingerbread man is traditionally credited to the court of which English monarch?
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I is credited with the first gingerbread men; her court reportedly had the figures baked in the likeness of visiting dignitaries.
Q 08Which Shropshire town became famous for its gingerbread, traditionally dunked in port wine?
Market Drayton
Market Drayton, a market town in north Shropshire, has long billed itself as the home of gingerbread, a local speciality traditionally dunked in port.
Q 09In the 15th century, who controlled the production of Lebkuchen in cities such as Nuremberg?
A guild
In Nuremberg only guild members could bake it, whereas in other towns women baked and sold it freely.
Q 10Toruń, famous since medieval times for its gingerbread, is in which modern country?
Poland
Poland: Toruń, on the Vistula, made gingerbread under the Teutonic Order in the Middle Ages and is also the birthplace of Copernicus.
Q 11Nürnberger Lebkuchen has been a protected designation since 1996; it must be made where?
Inside the city limits
Inside the city limits of Nuremberg is where EU rules require Nürnberger Lebkuchen to be made; the city's Lebkuchen bakers were first documented in 1395.
Q 12Elisenlebkuchen, the finest grade of Nuremberg gingerbread, must contain at least what proportion of nuts?
A quarter
A quarter is the floor: Elisenlebkuchen must be at least 25 percent almonds, hazelnuts or walnuts and no more than 10 percent flour under German food guidelines.
Q 13What is the Oblate, the thin base on which traditional Lebkuchen is baked?
A wafer
Q 21The hard white icing used to pipe snow on gingerbread roofs is made from icing sugar and what?
Beaten egg whites
Beaten egg whites whisked with icing sugar, often with a squeeze of lemon, make the icing that dries hard enough to pipe snow and hold decorations.
Q 22Which Norwegian city has built a whole gingerbread town, Pepperkakebyen, every Christmas since 1991?
Bergen
Bergen's Pepperkakebyen, built every December since 1991 from houses contributed by schools, businesses and families, is billed as the world's largest gingerbread town.
Q 23In 2013 a group in Bryan, Texas, set a Guinness record with a gingerbread house of what floor area?
2,520 square feet
A wafer: monks adopted the communion-style Oblate as a base to stop the sticky honey dough welding itself to the baking tray.
Q 14Printen, a firm spiced gingerbread, are the speciality of which German city?
Aachen
Aachen is home to Printen, a dense rectangular gingerbread sweetened with beet syrup and protected as Aachener Printen under EU rules.
Q 15Lebkuchen is the soft form of the national gingerbread; the harder form is associated with what?
Carnivals and Christmas markets
Carnivals and Christmas markets are where the hard form turns up, shaped into hearts, iced with messages and hung on ribbons around visitors' necks.
Q 16The tradition of building decorated gingerbread houses began in which country?
Germany
Germany is where decorated gingerbread houses began; Germans call one a Lebkuchenhaus or Pfefferkuchenhaus, and they remain a Christmas fixture there.
Q 17Some researchers link the first gingerbread houses to which 1812 Brothers Grimm fairy tale?
Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretel, with its witch's edible cottage in the woods, is the tale some historians credit with inspiring the first decorated gingerbread houses.
Q 18In the original Grimm version of the tale, what is the witch's house in the forest made of?
Bread, cake and sugar
Bread, cake and sugar: in the 1812 text the house is built of bread with a roof of cake and windows of clear sugar, and the witch fattens Hansel to eat him.
Q 19Whose 1893 opera Hänsel und Gretel helped fix the gingerbread house in the popular imagination?
Engelbert Humperdinck
Engelbert Humperdinck wrote Hänsel und Gretel, premiered at Weimar in December 1893 under Richard Strauss; its Wagnerian score reflects his years assisting Wagner at Bayreuth.
Q 20What is usually used as the glue that holds a gingerbread house together?
Royal icing
Royal icing is the standard mortar because it dries rock hard; piped along the edges, it sets quickly to bond walls and roof and holds decorations too.
2,520 square feet was the footprint of the Traditions Club house in Bryan, Texas, built in 2013 from 7,200 eggs and 1,800 pounds of butter, with a calorie count above 35 million.
Q 24Jon Lovitch's GingerBread Lane set a 2013 record with how many edible buildings?
157
157 buildings, 135 of them houses and 22 commercial premises, made up Jon Lovitch's all-edible GingerBread Lane when it took the Guinness record in 2013.
Q 25The fairy tale of the Gingerbread Man first appeared in print in 1875 in which American periodical?
St. Nicholas Magazine
St. Nicholas Magazine printed the tale as "The Gingerbread Boy" in May 1875; the runaway-food plot also appears in Norway's "Pannekaken" and Russia's "Kolobok".
Q 26Which animal finally catches and eats the Gingerbread Man in the fairy tale?
A fox
A fox carries him across a river and eats him bite by bite as he cries "quarter gone, half gone, three-quarters gone, all gone".
Q 27In the film Shrek, which villain kidnaps and tortures Gingy the Gingerbread Man for information?
Lord Farquaad
Lord Farquaad has Gingy dunked in milk and his legs snapped off in the 2001 film, yet the cookie, voiced by Conrad Vernon, refuses to say where the fairy-tale creatures are.
Q 28In the Shrek films, who is described as the creator and 'father' of Gingy and his giant brother Mongo?
The Muffin Man
The Muffin Man of Drury Lane bakes Gingy and, in Shrek 2, the giant Mongo; Conrad Vernon, a story artist on the first film, voices all three.
Q 29Which writer's 1803 journal records her craving for gingerbread at Grasmere?
Dorothy Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth wrote in her Grasmere journal in January 1803 of a craving for gingerbread; the Lake District village's modern version is a chewy cross between biscuit and cake.
Q 30Grasmere gingerbread is made to a secret recipe popularised by which 19th-century woman?
Sarah Nelson
Sarah Nelson, who lived from 1815 to 1904, devised the recipe in 1854 and sold it from the tiny former schoolhouse beside St Oswald's churchyard in Grasmere.