Beatrix Potter’s recipe for gingerbread

The kitchn has a whimsical article about the sale today of Beatrix Potter’s personal recipe book. Just recently found, it has recipes for for sponge cake, roast turkey, curry, and gingerbread (no rabbit, however). The book is expected to sell for £200-£400.

The publicists are allowing sites to reprint Potters’s gingerbread recipe. We found the list of ingredients particularly fascinating, both for the amount of each item (this is one big gingerbread) and the inclusion of ale:

• 3.5 lb wheat meal
• 3.5 lb treacle
• 12 oz sugar
• 12 oz butter
• 2 oz ground ginger
• 1 oz pounded allspice
• 1 pint of ale

Potter obviously was not afraid to tackle some heavy stirring!

But this recipe did get us thinking about putting ale in gingerbread and so we explored the EYB library a little. By making the ingredient “dark beer, ” typing in “gingerbread” in the search box, filtering by online recipes, and then sorting by “rating” we quickly unearthed this really marvelous-looking, 5-star recipe from Smitten Kitchen for Gramercy’s Tavern Gingerbread (Just click on the title and you can link to the full recipe from the right-hand column). This is definitely going into our “Recipes to Make” file.