[Sca-cooks] Re: Marzipan in Munich

[Fred Schwohl]

Dear gentle Lady,

Let me offer some humble advice on buying Marzipan in Germany, especially in
Munich.

First, you might consider not to buy confectioned Marzipan which is
available in Standard stores throughout the country, but for your task so
called "Marzipan Rohmasse" is much better to be used. This pre fabricated
mass consists of almonds and sugar only, mostly in a 60:40 ratio
(60%almonds), thus enabling you to get the final product to your
taste with ease. You should evade all products containing other ingredients
like Invertase, Coloring or other additives as these show a low Quality
product.

Pre-fabricated products you can buy from the shelf here are not necessarily
easy to use or to bring in shape and mostly are containing to much sugar for
my taste.

As Marzipan is somehow regarded as a German Speciality (according to some
sorces the main reason for that is the fact that after it´s long history
dating back to the romans and later to Venice it was later regarded as a
Royal Treat due to the high price for imported sugar from sugar cane, a fact
which changed after blocked imports to Europe during Napoleon´s era and
cheap new sources for Sugar where found in the sugar beet by the German
Scientist Andreas Marggraf in 1747. In 1801 the first factory for beet sugar
was build in Cunern in Lower Silesia in the north eastern part of Germany
(well it was Prussia then, but please do not bother with details :o) ) and
in 1806 import of cane sugar into Europe had dropped nearly to zero.

The Best German Marzipan comes still from the northern part of the country
and Brand names as "Niederegger" or "Schwermer" are famous for their
products. This might have to do with the fact that they use a large quantity
of high quality almonds from Italy and Spain instead of the more easily
available but less palatable almonds from other countries.

The mentioned "Marzipan Rohmasse" is available in most larger Warehouses in
the area the baking utensils are stored and there are various brands
available. Mostly you can buy this in blocks of 250 grams, but sometimes you
will find larger rolls wrapped in plastic of 400 grams weight. Do not mix
this up with "Persipan" which is sold in the same form but consists not of
almonds but of peach and apricot kernels. As this contains only almonds and
sugar, sometmes you might want to add flavouring (Rosewater) and of course
it is much easier to work with this as due to the high content of almonds
additional Sugar or eggwhite can be added without spoiling the taste.

At the moment such a 400g roll is around 3.99 €. In Munich I would suggest
the Walmart or similar larger department stores as there the turnover
guarantees fresh quality. You might want to make sure that importing such a
Quantity back into the US does not cause any problem.

Other sources like the already mentioned "Hamberger" (a Wholesale
Distributor for cooking articles, mainly doing business with Restaurants and
caterers) might not have Marzipan on sale all the time, there it might be
necessary to pre order the product, which is then available in batches of 10
- 25 kg only (intended to be sold to patiseries, bakeries et. Al.

If you happen to know a baker here in Munich, just contact him and let him
do the ordering through his sources, as this is the easiest method to get
hands on such large quantities. But then exporting might be even harder as
this will be a fresh product in a cartonage without proper labeling for any
US customs officer, looking (and smelling) very suspicious like Semtex (some
exlosives from Eastern Europe, smelling like Bitter almonds and as well
kneadable).

Unfortunately I will not be in on the weekend in question as I would
otherwise have offered my assistance in this.

My best regards
Fred

(Living in Munich and having the pleasure to cook a Medieval Feast on that
Weekend in a Kitchen dated back from 1587)

> Greetings,
> 
> elaina wrote:
>> i will be in munich for the weekend over the 12-13th of december and
>> want to buy marzepan.  does anyone have any specific ideas where to go
>> or a specific shop to recommend.  i'm not looking for some little bit to
>> munch - i'm looking for 5 or 10 kilos to take home to use for 12th night.
> 
> hmm, I never had to buy that much... if you'd stay longer, you could
> probably try a wholesale market like Hamberger (Friedensstr. 16), but I
> found a sweet-wholesale market in Rosenheim, some 100km south-east of
> Munich:
> Richard Fohlmeister
> Austrasse 3
> 83022 Rosenheim
> http://www.best-sweets.de
> 
> You should also consider that Germany doesn't yet belong to the civilised
> world and so most stores are closed on weekends.
> kai

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