What Is Lebkuchen? Nuremberg's Christmas Spice Cake, Explained

A spice-route cake

The City of Nuremberg says Lebkuchen bakers, called Lebküchner, are documented there from the end of the 12th century. Two things made the city a natural home: honey from the surrounding imperial forest and a seat on the trade routes that carried spices into Europe.

The spice list the city gives is long: cinnamon above all, then anise, ginger, cardamom, coriander, mace, cloves and allspice. Nuremberg's tourism office credits Franconian monks with the first Lebkuchen, a story told often but hard to pin to a document.

The Lebküchner guild

In 1643 Nuremberg registered its first sworn Lebküchner guild, with 14 members. According to the city, the recipes were treated as such a secret that the council forbade the bakers to leave town.

Some of that secrecy survives. Nuremberg bakers still guard their own spice blends, and the city magazine describes one baker leaving the raw cakes out overnight so a skin forms that keeps them moist in a hot oven. Our Nuremberg Elisenlebkuchen use the same overnight rest.

Elisenlebkuchen and the protected name

Since 1996, Nürnberger Lebkuchen has been a protected geographical indication in the European Union, so it must be made within the city. Separately, a quality guideline in force since 1978 says Elisenlebkuchen must contain at least 25 percent almonds, hazelnuts or walnuts and no more than 10 percent flour, and many Nuremberg bakers use none.

Our recipe, adapted from a Franconian baker's card published by Bavaria's tourism site, works out to about 8 percent flour and 30 percent nuts by weight of the raw mixture (125 g of flour and 475 g of nuts in about 1,575 g). Each cake is spread on a thin wafer called an Oblate.

Nobody knows who Elise was. The tourism office tells the legend of Elisabeth, a baker's daughter cured by a flourless spiced cake, and admits it may not be true; Wikipedia says the name dates to 1808 and that she may have been a baker's daughter or a margrave's wife.

Lebkuchen vs gingerbread

English speakers often call Lebkuchen gingerbread, and Nuremberg's own tourism office does too. The two belong to the same old family of honey and spice cakes, but an Elisen cake is closer to a soft macaroon than to a rolled, cut cookie, and ginger is just one spice among many.

Germany also makes harder Lebkuchen, like the iced hearts sold at fairs. If you want the crisp, rolled side of the family, our Swedish pepparkakor are a Scandinavian cousin.

The American descendant

NCpedia, the State Library of North Carolina's encyclopedia, says the Moravian spice cookie descends from Lebkuchen and arrived in central North Carolina with Moravian settlers in 1753. It was made with molasses, ginger and cloves, and because spices were costly the cookies were saved for holidays.

They went the opposite way from Elisen: rolled about one millimeter thin, NCpedia says, so a batch stretched further. Our Moravian spice cookies use the North Carolina Folklife Institute's Winston-Salem family recipe, and both cookies sit in our cookies of the world collection.

Questions people ask