Marzipan

• 1. Introduction

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  Marzipan, a paste of sugar and ground almonds, appears in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, in Act 1, Scene 5, under the old English name marchpane. Today it is molded into pigs, potatoes, eggs and tiny painted fruit. Bakers also roll it into thin sheets and glaze it over birthday cakes and wedding cakes. Others dip it in chocolate or fold it into a Dutch pastry called banket. In some places it turns up inside king cake during the Carnival season. The recipe sounds simple: sugar, almond meal, and sometimes a little almond oil or extract. Yet nobody agrees on who first made it. The word itself has several rival explanations, and one of them involves an ornate box. Where did this sweet begin, how does a cook turn raw almonds into a smooth paste, and what separates the genuine article from a cheaper imitation?

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• 2. Disputed Origins

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  Toledo, in Spain, holds the earliest written reference to marzipan, dated 1512, yet the sweet's true birthplace is still argued over. Two lines of origin have been proposed. They do not necessarily contradict each other, because Mediterranean trade and cooking influences have always overlapped. Other sources go further east and place the beginning in China, from where the recipe is said to have travelled to the Middle East and then into Europe through Al-Andalus.

  The first line runs through the northeast Mediterranean. Turks are believed to have introduced marzipan to Eastern Europe, where it is called badem ezmesi, and it was most notably produced in Edirne. Hungary and Italy dispute the origin between them. The sweet later became a specialty of the Hanseatic League port towns, and Lübeck and Tallinn both take pride in their marzipan making. Königsberg in East Prussia was also renowned for its own version. Königsberg marzipan remains a distinct type in Germany, golden brown on the surface and sometimes holding marmalade at its center.

  The second line leads to the parts of Spain once known as Al-Andalus. In Toledo, the specialty was called Postre Regio rather than Mazapán. One dating offers the years 850-900, though 1150, during the reign of Alfonso VII, is judged more probable. The folktale collection One Thousand and One Nights also mentions an almond paste eaten during Ramadan and prized as an aphrodisiac. Supporters of this line point to the long tradition of turrón, another Spanish almond confection made for Christmas.

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• 3. Searching For The Name

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  Between 1483 and 1492, Johann Burchard wrote his Diarium curiae romanae, and in it the Latin form martiapanis appears. That spelling supports one popular theory, that the name comes from the Latin martius panis, meaning bread of March. Italian marzapane is documented earlier than the word in any other language. The element pan, meaning bread, comes from the Romance languages. The original English marchpane carried the same apparent meaning, March bread, until the German name largely pushed it aside.

  The ultimate etymology remains unclear. The Italian word may come from the Latin massa, itself from the Greek maza, meaning pastry, joined to pan. Echoes of this appear in Provençal massapan, Catalan massapà, Portuguese maçapão and old Spanish mazapán. In old Spanish, the change from ss to z was common in Latin words, and the r arrived later. The Real Academia Española offers a different path. It suggests mazapán may descend from the Hispanic Arabic pičmáṭ, which came from the Greek paxamádion, meaning little cake.

  The most colorful proposal starts with the Arabic mawthābān, meaning king who sits still. Latinised as matapanus, it described a Venetian coin showing Christ the King on a throne. Such coins were kept in ornate boxes. From about the fifteenth century, when the coins no longer circulated, the empty boxes became decorative containers for storing and serving luxury sweetmeats. In the sixteenth century, almond-flavoured marzipan crept into the box, and the sweet was named, at least proximately, after its container. The Oxford English Dictionary adds a stranger candidate still: Martaban, a Burmese city famous for its jars.

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• 4. From Almond To Paste

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  Every batch begins with a hot bath. Raw almonds are first cleaned by sieving, by air currents, and by other mechanical or electronic devices. They are then immersed in water just below the boiling point for about five minutes, a step known as blanching. This loosens the skins, which rubber-covered rotating cylinders strip away. After cooling, the almonds are coarsely chopped and ground with up to 35% sugar into almond flour. The traditional raw filler follows the same steps with sweet almonds and caps the sucrose at 35%.

  The flour mixture is then roasted and cooled. Table sugar goes in next, and sometimes a binding agent such as starch syrup or sorbitol. The paste can be moulded into any shape. Storage matters, because marzipan must be kept in an airtight container so it does not harden and dry out. It should also be shielded from direct light, which would turn the almond oil rancid through lipid oxidation.

  A compound called benzaldehyde, formed from amygdalin in the almonds, accounts in part for the aroma and flavor. Structurally, marzipan is a food emulsion with four phases. Suspended particles of almond and sugar form the solid phase. Air pockets worked in during mixing form a second, and water and almond oil supply the other two. Left alone for a long time, the phases can separate. Phospholipids and triglycerides from the almond cells hold them together. The fats include saturated stearic acid and unsaturated linoleic acid, and makers may add emulsifiers to extend shelf life. The softness comes from a balance between solids and liquids, with moisture kept below 10%.

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• 5. Real Or Imitation

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  Niederegger, a Lübeck manufacturer, still guarantees that its marzipan is two-thirds almonds by weight. That ratio helps explain why Lübeck Marzipan carries Protected geographical indication status. The Geographical indications and traditional specialities in the European Union recognize just two marzipans in Europe, that one and the marzipan of Toledo. Toledo's regulator council requires almonds to make up at least half of the total weight.

  Other places measure quality differently. In Sweden and Finland, the term almond paste means a marzipan with 50% ground almonds, well above the regular grade. The United States has no official definition of marzipan. It is generally made with more sugar relative to almonds than almond paste. One brand, for instance, uses 28% almonds in its marzipan and 45% in its almond paste.

  Cheaper stand-ins are common. Persipan replaces the almonds with apricot or peach kernels. Many products sold as marzipan use soy paste and almond essence instead. To catch such substitutions, polymerase chain reaction methods can tell almonds from substitutes and adulterants even below one percent concentration.

  Methods differ by country too. German marzipan is made by grinding whole almonds with sugar and partly drying the paste. French massepain combines ground almonds with sugar syrup. Some marzipan is flavoured with rosewater. Spanish marzipan leaves out bitter almonds, and the United States bans their import because they contain a substance related to cyanide. Sugar-free marzipan is possible by swapping the sugar for polyols such as maltitol.

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• 6. Southern Sweets

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  On the 2nd of November, Il Giorno dei Morti or All Souls' Day, Sicilian tables fill with marzipan painted to look like fruit. In Palermo this is called frutta martorana, and food colourings give it its lifelike shades. It is also made at Christmas, and the 9th and the 10th of May are further special days for eating marzipan in Sicily.

  Spain treats mazapán as a Christmas dessert, although in Toledo people eat it all year round. There it is often pressed into simple animal shapes, and sometimes filled with egg yolk and sugar, a filling called yema. Across the border in Portugal, nuns have traditionally made maçapão, which is shaped into fruits. In the Algarve it is a very common sweet, and it is filled with fios de ovos, thin strands of egg.

  In Greece and Cyprus, marzipan comes in many shapes and sizes but is almost always left white. On the islands of the Aegean, white marzipan is a wedding treat served to guests at the wedding feast. Malta uses it as the filling of figolli, the traditional Easter treats whose singular is figolla. In Turkey, two regional variations of the sweet are registered with the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office.

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• 7. Northern And Western Europe

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  Around Christmas, people in Denmark, Sweden and Norway snack on marzipan pigs. Marzipan eggs arrive around Easter, and kransekage is eaten on New Year's Eve. The paste also goes into cakes unrelated to any holiday, among them træstammer, gåsebryst and napoleonshatte. It is the main ingredient in the remonce filling of Danish pastry. Swedish princess cake is typically covered in marzipan tinted pale green or pink. Finland's Käpykakku wears a dark brown coat of marzipan, spiky and shaped like a conifer cone. In Tallinn, Estonia, a museum collects items on the history and manufacture of marzipan.

  In Belgium and the Netherlands, marsepein figures are given as presents for Sinterklaas, or Saint Nicholas. In France, massepain is the specialty of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, a town in Limousin, where it takes a biscuit shape. The Gironde region makes something different under the same name. Its Girondin pudding is built from hard bread and brown sugar, flavoured with raisins soaked in rum.

  German Christmas tables feature marzipan in the shape of a loaf of bread, called Marzipanbrot, or small potatoes, called Marzipankartoffeln. Stollen can contain marzipan, as can Bethmännchen, Dominosteine and other Christmas cookies. A traditional new year present is the Glücksschwein, or lucky pig. Austria exports Mozartkugeln, marzipan balls dipped in dark chocolate. The original hand-made version uses green pistachio marzipan.

  In the United Kingdom, celebratory fruitcakes wear a layer of marzipan. A Christmas cake carries it beneath white sugar icing. The Simnel cake eaten at Easter holds a layer inside and another on top, lightly grilled to color it. Battenberg cake, which originated in England, is covered in marzipan too.

  Geneva's yearly celebration of L'Escalade includes smashing a chocolate cauldron filled with marzipan vegetables. It recalls a Savoyard siege of the city that was supposedly foiled by a housewife with a cauldron of boiling soup.

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• 8. Beyond Europe

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  In Syria, marzipan goes by lozina, lowzineh or marçabén, names tied to the Arabic lawz, meaning almond. Cooks flavour it with orange-flower water and shape it into roses and other delicate flowers before baking. It can also be made from oatmeal, farina or semolina.

  For Jews in Iran, marzipan fruit is a traditional Passover treat that takes the place of biscuits and cakes. A Sephardic Jewish custom ties it to childbirth. Friends of the new mother cooked for her and prepared homemade marzipan. People believed it enhanced her milk and counted it a symbol of purity and good fortune for mother and baby.

  In Latin America, mazapán is traditionally eaten at Christmas, and some versions use nuts or seeds other than almonds. In Guatemala, a specialty from Amatitlán combines pumpkin seed, called pepita, with rice and sugar. Mexican mazapán is typically made from peanuts, and it is the most common variety there. A commercial Mexican candy uses this peanut paste.

  In the Indian state of Goa, maçapão arrived from Portugal, but cooks there use cashew nuts instead of almonds. Goan marzipan becomes Easter eggs, and Christmas sweets shaped as fruits, flowers and stars. In Mumbai, cashew-based or almond-based marzipan is molded for Christmas and then into eggs, chickens and bonnets for Easter. The Philippines received marzipan from Spain and makes mazapán de pili from pili nuts.

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