The cure for a venomous bite
By the 17th century gingerbread looked more familiar. The breadcrumbs were replaced by wheat flour and honey would gradually be phased out when an alternative sweetener became widely available.
More and more sugar was grown, refined and imported into Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, and it became cheaper too. (These low prices had a high human cost – they were largely because of the expansion of Caribbean plantations, and the exploitation of the enslaved Africans forced to work on them.)
One by-product of the sugar-refining process was a thick, dark, bittersweet liquid. The name ‘triacle’ or ‘theriaca’ was originally given to a honey-infused medicine for venomous bites and poisons. But this new cheap product began to replace the honey, and it became known as ‘common treacle’. Eventually, so much treacle was being produced that cooks found tasty non-medical uses for it – and it found its way into gingerbread.
