Wednesday, November 21, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Journey
through
Thyme
Jodi Schneider
Columnist
The history
of traditional
holiday treats
‘Tis the season for holi-
day sweets, treats and indul-
gences. Seasonal goodies are
everywhere, they have found
their way on to grocery store
shelves, taken center stage in
bakery display cases, and are
filling our homes with heav-
enly aromas.
How did some of these tra-
ditional festive flavored holi-
day treats come to be?
Here are the origins behind
a few of our favorite holiday
foods that have been around
for decades — even centuries!
Candy canes seem to be
everywhere during the holiday
season, appearing in holiday
home décor to the flavoring
in your morning mocha to
the crunchy crumbles on pep-
permint bark. But where did
candy canes come from?
The Christmas candy cane
originated in Germany about
250 years ago. They started as
straight white sugar sticks.
One story says that a choir-
master, in 1670, was wor-
ried about the children sitting
quietly all through the long
Christmas nativity service.
So, he gave them something
to eat to keep them quiet. He
wanted to remind the children
of Christmas, so he made the
candies into a “J” shape like
a shepherd’s crook, to remind
them of the shepherds that vis-
ited the baby Jesus at the first
Christmas.
Sometime around 1900
the red stripes were added,
and they were flavored
with peppermint or winter-
green. Around 1920, Bob
McCormack, from Georgia,
started making canes for his
friends and family. They
became more and more pop-
ular, and he started his own
business called Bob’s Candies.
McCormack’s brother-in-law,
Gregory Harding Keller, who
was a Catholic priest, invented
the “Keller Machine” that
turned straight candy sticks
into curved candy canes auto-
matically. In 2005, Bob’s
Candies was bought by Farley
25
Favor ite Old-fashion ed Ginger bread
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1 cup molasses
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup hot water
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees
C). Grease and fl our a nine-inch square pan.
In a large bowl, cream together the
sugar and butter. Beat in the egg and
mix in the molasses.
In a bowl, sift together the flour,
baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger,
and cloves. Blend into the creamed
mixture. Stir in the hot water. Pour into
the prepared pan.
Bake 1 hour in the preheated oven,
until a knife inserted in the center comes
out clean. Allow to cool in pan before serving.
and Sathers, but they still
make candy canes.
This time of the year,
cooks around the country
take to their kitchens to bake
cookies. Whether you prefer
gingerbread men, crispy sugar
cookies or crunchy biscotti,
chances are you’ll enjoy some
fresh-baked Christmas cook-
ies this holiday season. Like
many Christmas traditions the
origin of this delicious custom
lies ages ago.
Ancient cooks prepared
sweet baked goods to mark
certain occasions. Many of
these recipes and ingredients
(cinnamon, ginger, black pep-
per, almonds, dried fruits etc.)
were introduced to Europe
in the Middle
Ages. Christmas
cookies, as we know them
today, trace their roots to these
medieval European recipes.
Dutch and German settlers
introduced cookies, cookie-
cutters and festive holiday
decorations to America in the
17th century.
No treat symbolizes the
holidays quite like ginger-
bread, from edible houses to
candy-studded gingerbread
men to spiced loaves of cake-
like bread, gingerbread comes
in many forms. In medieval
England, the term gingerbread
simply meant “preserved gin-
ger” and wasn’t applied to the
desserts we are familiar with
until
the 15th century. The term is
now broadly used to describe
any type of sweet treat that
combines ginger with honey,
sugar or molasses.
During the Middle Ages it
was favored as a spice for its
ability to disguise the taste of
preserved meats. Henry VIII
is said to have used a ginger
concoction in hopes of build-
ing a resistance to the plague.
Even today we use ginger
as an effective remedy for
nausea and other stomach
See TREATS on page 37