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Gingerbread refers to a broad category of baked goods, typically flavored with ginger, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar or molasses. Gingerbread foods vary, ranging from a soft, moist loaf cake to something close to a ginger snap.

Originally, the term gingerbread referred to preserved ginger. It then referred to a confection made with honey and spices. Gingerbread is often used to translate the French term pain d'épices (literally "spice bread") or the German terms Pfefferkuchen (lit. "pepper cake", because it used to contain pepper) or Lebkuchen (of unclear etymology; either Latin libum, meaning "sacrifice" or "sacrificial bread", or German Laib for loaf or German for life, leben). Pepper is also referenced in regional names like pepperkaker or perník

The meaning of gingerbread has evolved over time; for centuries the word was used for a traditional European pastry, closer to a cookie, like what is used to make gingerbread men. In the United States, the first known recipe for "Soft gingerbread to be baked in pans" comes from American Cookery (1796) by Amelia Simmons.

Gingerbread is claimed to have been brought to Europe in 992 CE by the Armenian monk Gregory of Nicopolis (also called Gregory Makar and Grégoire de Nicopolis). He left Nicopolis (in modern-day western Greece) to live in Bondaroy (north-central France), near the town of Pithiviers. He stayed there for seven years until his death in 999 and taught gingerbread baking to French Christians.[better source needed] It may have been brought to Western Europe from the eastern Mediterranean in 11th century.

Since the 13th century, Toruń gingerbread was made in Toruń, then State of the Teutonic Order (now Poland). It gained fame in the realm and abroad when it was brought to Sweden by German immigrants. In 15th-century Germany, a gingerbread guild controlled production.Early references from the Vadstena Abbey show that the Swedish nuns baked gingerbread to ease indigestion in 1444.It was the custom to bake white biscuits and paint them as window decorations. In England, gingerbread was also thought to have medicinal properties. 16th-century writer John Baret described gingerbread as "a kinde of cake or paste made to comfort the stomacke."

The first documented trade of gingerbread biscuits in England dates to the 17th century,[citation needed] where they were sold in monasteries, pharmacies and town square farmers' markets. One hundred years later, the town of Market Drayton in Shropshire, became known for its gingerbread, as is displayed on their town's welcome sign, stating that it is the "home of gingerbread". The first recorded mention of gingerbread being baked in the town dates to 1793, although it was probably made earlier, as ginger had been stocked in high street businesses since the 1640s. Gingerbread became widely available in the 18th century.

Gingerbread came to the Americas with settlers from Europe. Molasses, which was less expensive than sugar, soon became a common ingredient and produced a softer cake. The first printed American cookbook, American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, contained seven different recipes for gingerbread. Her recipe for "Soft gingerbread to be baked in pans" is the first written recipe for the cakey old-fashioned American gingerbread.
In England, gingerbread may refer to a cake, or type of cookie or biscuit made with ginger. In the biscuit form, it commonly takes the form of a gingerbread man. Gingerbread men were first attributed to the court of Queen Elizabeth I, who served the figurines to foreign dignitaries.Today, however, they are generally served around Christmas. Gingerbread was a traditional confectionery sold at popular fairs, often given as a treat or token of affection to children and lovers "sweethearts" and known as a "fairing" of gingerbread - the name retained now only by Cornish fairings. This crisp brittle type of gingerbread is now represented by the very popular commercial version called the ginger nut biscuit.

"Parliament cake" or "Parlies", a very spicy ginger shortbread, were eaten (in the same way as salty snacks with beer), with whisky, rum or brandy, during midday breaks, by the members of the original (pre-1707) Scottish Parliament, in a secret backroom (ben the hoose), at a tavern and shop in Bristo Street in Edinburgh's Potterrow, behind the University, run by a Mrs Flockhart, AKA Luckie Fykie, the landlady who is thought to be the inspiration for Mrs Flockhart in Walter Scott's Waverley. The recipe is mentioned in Christian Isobel Johnstone's The Cook and Housewife's Manual (also known as Meg Dod's Cookery) (1826) published under the pseudonym of "Mrs. Margaret Dods, of the Cleikum Inn, Saint Ronan's", evoking the character of Margaret Dods, the hostess of the Cleikum Inn in Walter Scott's novel Saint Ronan's Well (1823).It wqs immensely popular, and in which, she used characters