It is flavored with molasses, rum, and spices (ginger, allspice, nutmeg, cloves) and has a soft, chewy center.

The original cookies were the size of pancakes and were cooked in an iron skillet;[1] those made today are typically smaller, and baked in an oven.

He may have been freed as a reward for his military service in the American Revolutionary War; he was a member of Francis Felton's company,[3] Glover's Regiment.

[3] In 1795, Joseph and Lucretia Brown went in with another couple on the purchase of a saltbox house at the top of Gingerbread Hill in Marblehead, next to a mill pond.

A recipe for "Tavern Cookies" published by Mary Randolph in 1824 may be a more expensive version of Brown's creation; it calls for sugar instead of molasses, and wine or brandy instead of rum.