The Original Gingerbread

Grasmere is a charming village in the Lakes District of England - home to the original gingerbread.

One of the little pleasures while walking across England is passing through quaint villages with sweet surprises. Such was our luck when, in the center of the Lakes District, we found ourselves in Grasmere. According to poet William Wordsworth, who lived there for 14 years, it is "the loveliest spot that man hath ever found." Lovely does not begin to describe the lush green rolling hills, crooked streets, and the charming village center. There you can find the birthplace of gingerbread. It's not the soft, chewy cookies shaped like a man you might think of, or the moist cake served with a dollop of cream, but a cracker-like cookie that is the first, original gingerbread.

The gingerbread is wrapped in paper and tied with a string. Hungry customers queue up to taste a piece of history at Sarah Nelson’s Grasmere Gingerbread Shop.

The woman we have to thank for this universally-loved confection is Sarah Nelson. She was a Victorian era inventor who combined sweet and spicy flavors out of her Church Cottage home, which later became The Grasmere Gingerbread Shop. She sold it to villagers and visitors from a table top as she sat on a tree stump outside her front door.

Church Cottage, home of the original gingerbread.

According to the shop's history, "Within a few years, its reputation had reached nearly every corner of the country, and with the advent of the steam railways, tourists flocked to Grasmere to buy her succulent invention." Sarah Nelson was a tireless worker who was a true entrepreneur. In her later years, she became a regular fixtures of the village, usually seen sitting on a chair outside Church Cottage dressed in a white apron and shawl.

Once inside the tiny shop, customers are transported to the time when Sarah would have been selling her wares.

I cannot publish this story without attempting to find a recipe that closely mimics Sarah Nelson’s original creation. If you dare, try the recipe, but better yet, plan a trip to where you can pass through this village steeped in history, and join the queue outside Church Cottage to enjoy gingerbread as it was always meant to be.