Grasmere Gingerbread war....

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

2008 has seen the opening exchanges in the Grasmere Gingerbread wars in our very own picturesque village. On one side is Sarah Nelsons Grasmere Gingerbread owned by the Wilsons, on the other side is one of the Grasmere cafes called Williams.

Now I have been thinking about this subject over the New Year and thought we would do a taste test to see which side our palate would go for. So I went for a stroll with Luke in his pram around the village in order to compare Sarah Nelsons to one made by the cafe.

I purchased some from Sarah Nelsons beautiful little shop, built in 1630 originally as the village school. The lady serving was in full costume and when you enter the shop it is like stepping back in time. As well as buying the gingerbread you can smell the fresh ginger bread being baked and read a little more about the life and times of Sarah Kemp, born in Bowness, who became Sarah Nelson and used to bake Gingerbread in her rented home of "Gate Cottage" from about 1850 onwards until she died at the age of 88. Nowadays the business is managed by Joanne Wilson whose parents own the shop.

In Sarah Nelsons time, the gingerbread was wrapped up in pure vegetable parchment printed ‘None Genuine Without Trade Mark’, today it still bears that same inscription with greaseproof paper replacing the parchment.

The gingerbread is sold in slabs of six or twelve, carefully wrapped and then popped in an equally well presented bag. You can also buy small tins and other decorative items to hold your gingerbread.

You can only buy this gingerbread from the Grasmere shop, or via the shops website.

There is no doubt that that the gingerbread, the shop, its historical connections and the way these traditions have been upheld, help, in their way to put Grasmere on the map. Many, many tourists know about this great local product. It has the support and praise of a lot of top profile chefs and celebrities and draws a considerable number of both of them to the village for a visit.

So back to the comparison and off to one of the local cafes called Williams of Grasmere. They also make and have been selling gingerbread for at least the last seven years and now have a chalk board up announcing this fact. The cafe is a place that I have visited frequently with Luke, particularly when it was raining and was too wet for an extended walk. We would quite often end up here, he asleep, me with a coffee and a quick read of the papers. Whoops not this time though, new sign on the door, no pushchairs, hmmm, it's suddenly become a problem to bring small children into the cafe. Not too family friendly hey, but I guess infants don't spend much money and just take up space. Well I got the gingerbread, wrapped in a plain paper bag, dropped into an equally plain brown bag, but it was cheap and looked fine.

It is a lot thicker and less uniform than Sarah Nelsons but it tasted good, nice and gingery. Cecilia said she preferred it, but I really like the taste of Sarah Nelsons gingerbread and still prefer that. Luke didn't get a vote but as he can't visit Williams cafe, I count that as 2 to 1 in our household.

But what started the "war" was the application by the Wilsons (aka - Sarah Nelson) to trademark their Gingerbread as the only one that can use the words "Grasmere Gingerbread". Now you could argue that Sarah Nelson faced this problem before, and her solution was to print "her trademark" on the wrapper and let people know about it.

If we move away from Gingerbread to sausages for a moment, Cumbria is trying to get European Union PGI protected status for the "Traditional Cumberland Sausage". Whilst this could be seen as a way to protect local (ie Cumbrian) interests it's also a way of protecting the integrity of the sausage, notably that it is long and coiled, sold by weight, has a wider diameter than average, a high meat content (of at least 80%) and is generally pink. The meat used must be pork which has been rough-cut, giving a coarse texture, and must be encased in natural pig intestines. The pork must not contain any skin, gristle, rind, offal or any form of mechanically recovered meat. Cumberland sausages also tend to be more highly seasoned that other sausages. In the UK today, currently, you can buy all sorts of sausages that claim to be "Cumberland Sausage", but in fact are a million miles away from this traditional product, with low %'s of meat, lots of filler and containing God knows what.

So back to the gingerbread war. I come down firmly on the side of Sarah Nelsons application for a trademark for the words Grasmere Gingerbread. The reason in my mind is that the Wilson's business of running Sarah Nelson's Grasmere Gingerbread is genuinely preserving and keeping alive the traditions established by Sarah Nelson all those years ago. Aside from the shop in Grasmere, they work really hard at trade fairs presenting the "Grasmere Gingerbread" story, always in traditional costume. They have remained faithful to Sarah's original story (and recipe), this has an unquantifiable economic benefit to the village. It is a true local success story that they can rightfully claim to have been responsible for preserving. In other words it's the genuine article. As for the rest of the gingerbread in Grasmere, it may contain ginger and it may taste good, but in my book I'm not getting the genuine and full Grasmere Gingerbread experience, there is only one and it's much more than a recipe.The good thing is that with or without this trademark people are intelligent enough to recognise the real deal when they see it. - Martin

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Martins thoughts...

Grasmere Gingerbread war....