Word: gingerbreads
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...Gingerbread...
...Australians were stripped for action fighting mad. . . . The gingerbread was gone...
...word gingerbread" as a synonym for superfluity is a grievous error. . . . From antiquity, gingerbread was a ceremonial food and regarded as an appropriate sacrifice to the gods. ... As such it was ... often prepared in fanciful shapes and elaborately gilded. It was from this archaic custom that the expression developed, "the gilt is off the gingerbread. . . ." But mark you, it was the gilt that was "off," the gingerbread remained...
...Gingerbreads of "honor" were gifts of distinction on special occasions. . . . The birth of Peter the Great, for example, moved the city fathers of Moscow to dispatch several such huge gingerbreads of "honor," one in the form of the coat of arms of the City of Moscow, another in the form of the double eagle. Louis XIV, a gourmet of parts, restored the French counterpart of gingerbread, pain d'epice, to the place of eminence it had enjoyed for centuries in France...
...Gingerbread very early ceased to be a monopoly of the nobles. Even the poorest citizen of ancient Rome somehow found it within his means to proffer a spicy gift to the gods. In ancient Greece, where bread-baking was a fine art, the city of Rhodes was as famous for its gingerbread as it was for its harbor-bestriding Colossus. Part of the loot that the roving Crusaders carried home was culinary lore of the East, including the recipe for gingerbread. As spices came to be a more common property, the great mass of the people took gingerbread...