So, I have a half-remembered story in my mind. It's about a family in the American West, maybe late 1800s or early 1900s, that has a pot of gingerbread marinating in their home. In this story, it's an older kind of gingerbread, more like a soft soaked cake, that ages in alcohol for weeks and weeks before Christmas.
In the story, a person in the family gets up in the middle of the night to sneak a taste of the treat, then goes back to bed. But they're still craving the food, so they get up and have another taste again, and again. I can't remember what the consequences are -- maybe they get drunk, or maybe they get busted in the morning because the food is all gone.
I can't find any trace of this story by searching; I feel like it was in "The Great Brain", but searches aren't coming up well. Nor can I find a record of this kind of gingerbread. The description sounds more like a Christmas pudding than any kind of gingerbread I can find, which is usually either the hard cookie or a softer spicy cake.
So, here's my question: does either this story or the food that plays a central role ring a bell? Or are you more successful than I in finding it through Google, Wikipedia, LLM or other means?
@evan sounds like fruit cake, my aunt ages it for 1-2 years. Personally, I’d never sneak a taste, I’ve always tried to avoid tasting it in fact.
@bluejekyll @evan I also vaguely remember the story but I remember it as fruit cake
@darius @bluejekyll there's a story in the Great Brain about fruitcake, but it's about Tom trading his mom's fruitcake to schoolmates for favours.