Grantham: famous for it’s gingerbread?

Grantham is well known as being the birth place of Margaret Thatcher, but Grantham is also apparently famous for it’s gingerbread.  So much so it has references of origin dating back to 1740.

 This gingerbread is different however, to the regular gingerbread you or I know.  The unique traits Grantham gingerbread has are reported to be a result of a mistake by a man called William Egglestone.  

The wrong ingredients were added into the cake he was baking at his Grantham home.  As such this special gingerbread is white because it does not have black treacle in it, as well as being creamier than other sorts. 

 Whilst gingerbread is not celebrated by the town, local shops or people and isn’t produced commercially, it is apparently well known.  If Grantham gingerbread is typed into a search engine indeed a lot of recipes are returned. However unlike another of the county’s treasures, plum bread, it doesn’t return pages upon pages of information, producers, debates over PGI status and mountains of recipes. 

We wonder why Grantham gingerbread got lost in history and how many other treasures are we overlooking?

To have a look at why Grantham’s gingerbread is different view this recipe from The British Food Trust.