SC - Puck's marzipan

[Ian van Tets]

Hello!

I have some further suggestions as to the last, cryptic bit of the 
marzipan recipe (having checked my new, snazzy -well, old and beaten 
up, but I got it second hand just recently - etymological 
dictionary).

Oblat is apparently usually used to refer to a wafer now, but my 
guess is that it doesn't in this context.  I don't know why, call it 
a gut feeling.  

So what about splitting the syllables?  Ob was apparently used as a 
fairly common prefix in MHG, to mean 'above', or 'across'.  Lat has 2 
derivations:  one is confectionery (Latwerge:  'confection', from the 
equivalent MHG latwerge, latwerje - middle syllable has umlaut and 
circumflex over Es respectively).  The other is a board (Lade, from 
... Teutonic - as in pre-OHG - la[th], and English lath, for that 
matter).

So my guess is that this may be referring to a board that you use to 
mould the marzipan - possibly like a speculaas or shortbread mould 
(ie. with cut patterns on it) or (more likely) like the oatcake 
moulds mentioned in Elizabeth David's English Bread... book.  Why?  
Because a)  marzipan can be hell to roll out and control, and the 
recipe says to line the thing with paper, which would cancel out any 
pretty patterns, and b)

the last line appears to say (to my mind, anyway) to mould the 
marzipan:

>nym dann ein inger fey hulzin oder eysin eins zweihen finger gross.

(I've altered the long and sharp Ss for ease of reading).

So:  What if inger were an idiosyncratic spelling of Enger, a 'thing 
that compresses'?  Fey I would suggest may have a ~ above the y, in 
which case it should read 'feyn' - the standard 'fair' again.   

take a fair mould...

>hulzin oder eysin  -  

of wood or iron...

>eins zweihen finger gross

one which is 2 fingers big.


It sounds as though there ought to be perhaps more of this text, 
maybe one more line saying to lay the 2 sheets of marzipan in the 
mould, wet the edges and close.  So it seems to me as though what we 
have here is a description of making hollow marzipan shapes.

This is all pure conjecture on my part, of course.  

Fascinating piece.  Where does it come from?  It reads as though it's 
just on the verge of Early New High German.  Puck, please tell me its 
provenance, and also if there's any more where that came from.  I'm 
all excited now.

Cairistiona
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