Inspiration: Jane Dawson’s seventeenth century cookbook, Folger V.b.14, offers an almond-flour based gingerbread — a variation that’s quite common in early modern manuscripts. 
What’s perhaps more striking about hers, though, is that it’s surrounded by recipes for drying fruit that our cooks have seen as natural complements to gingerbread’s flavors. The text describes methods “To dry red or White corrans,” “To dry Peares,” To Dry Damsons or Plumes,” and “To Dry Cherrys Red.”
The OCC version topped off the spiced, warmed cake with apricots and plums, with edible flowers to boot.
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To Make Ginger bread of Allmonds: Take almonds blanch them & beat them in a morter & in the beating allways put in sugar; and as much gumdragon as the bigness of a small nut; & then beat them with a little sack till you can find noe gum continuall beating till it be come a fine past; if you would haue it red you may vse the powder of Cinamon & ginger finly cearced:. |
