Nobody agrees where marzipan came from, or even what its name means
One theory traces the word marzipan to a Venetian coin showing an enthroned Christ. The coins were kept in ornate boxes, and once they stopped circulating the boxes held luxury sweets, including an almond paste that may have taken the container's name. That is only one of several competing stories.
At heart marzipan is sugar and ground almonds, sometimes boosted with almond oil. Its origins are disputed. One line points to Al-Andalus, the Moorish parts of Spain: Toledo's first written mention dates from 1512, and the city eats it year round rather than only at Christmas. Another sees it arriving in Eastern Europe through Turkey, where badem ezmesi is especially associated with Edirne, while Hungary and Italy each claim it and some accounts start in China. Italian records the word earlier than any other language, and a Latin form, martiapanis, turns up in a papal court diary of the 1480s. Old English called it marchpane, a word Shakespeare put into Romeo and Juliet, while the Oxford English Dictionary even entertains a link to Martaban, a Burmese port famous for its jars.
Quality is measured in almonds. Lubeck and Toledo both hold EU protected status, and Lubeck makers such as Niederegger promise two-thirds almonds by weight, where Toledo's rules demand at least half. One American brand puts just 28 percent almonds in its marzipan. Cheaper persipan swaps in apricot or peach kernels, and DNA-based lab tests can spot substitutes at under one percent. Bitter almonds are banned from import into the United States because they contain a compound related to cyanide.
Almost every culture that adopted it reshaped it. Palermo paints marzipan to look like real fruit for All Souls' Day, Scandinavians nibble marzipan pigs at Christmas, and Aegean islanders serve plain white pieces at weddings. Portuguese nuns shaped it into fruit, and when Portugal carried it to Goa, cooks made it with cashews. Mexico uses peanuts, the Philippines pili nuts, and Guatemala's Amatitlan version combines pumpkin seeds with rice.
The most theatrical use may be Geneva's Escalade festival, where people smash a chocolate cauldron full of marzipan vegetables, recalling a housewife said to have foiled a Savoyard siege with a pot of boiling soup.
Source: Marzipan
