Gingerbread can rightfully claim to be one of Russia’s original sweets. A dessert called “honey bread” was first enjoyed in Ancient Egypt and came to Russia in the 9th Century, when the legendary Rurik and Oleg of Novgorod joined together disparate East Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes to form one unified state.
At that time, gingerbread was made from rye flour mixed with honey and berry juice. It got its modern name when people started enhancing this recipe with spices from India and the Middle East, which first appeared in Russia in the 12th-13th centuries. The most famous Russian gingerbread is from Tula, about 120 miles south of Moscow. It is a square slab of spicy cake filled with jam or condensed milk. In the late 1990s, Tula opened a museum devoted to the cake.