[Sca-cooks] Marzipan

[David Friedman]

I should have thought of asking Alys Katherine.

The conclusion is that what I made and Rebecca liked is medieval 
marzipan. What she has had before and didn't like is modern marzipan. We 
suspect that the element she didn't like was the almond extract. 
Elizabeth commented that my marzipan in Becca's stolen was less sweet 
than what we had had in commercial stolen, and she liked it better. That 
again is consistent with Alys Katherine's account.

I actually had some almond flour, didn't think of using it, but that 
would make the process trivial. The only question is whether blanching 
and grinding the almonds myself provides a tastier result.

On 12/25/20 7:33 AM, Johnna Holloway wrote:
> I think the fineness of the grind influences the mouth feel and then 
> there’s the matter of how much sugar there is to the weight of the 
> almonds.
> And maybe even the type of sugar, be it icing, fine around or granulated.
>
> Then there’s always the question of the rose water. Use or don’t use?
>
> Here’s the classic article from Countess Alys.
> http://damealys.medievalcookery.com/AboutMarzipan.html 
> <http://damealys.medievalcookery.com/AboutMarzipan.html>
>
> One of the more involved recipes (available only to us recently) is 
> this one:
>
> http://www.medievalcookery.com/search/display.html?trans:721:MRXPN
>
>
> The one thing we have these days is the ability to readily buy almond 
> meal of varying sorts and at various price points. (All due to gluten 
> free demand.)
> That makes the exploration even more of an adventure these days.
>
> Happy holidays.
>
> Johnnae
>
>
>
>> On Dec 25, 2020, at 3:11 AM, Terry Decker <t.d.decker at att.net> wrote:
>>
>> Commercial marzipan and almond paste often add binding agents, oil, 
>> egg, even corn syrup or sorbitol.  Sometimes they add almond 
>> extract.  And the price is ridiculous.
>>
>> Period marzipan tends to be as you describe.  Being lazy, I make mine 
>> with almond flour from Natural Grocers, where, when last I checker, I 
>> can get 2 or 4 pound bags at a reasonable rate.  For a coarser 
>> product (almond paste rather than marzipan), I use almond meal from 
>> Sprouts.  I store any unused marzipan as plastic wrapped and bagged 
>> one pound loaves in the freezer.
>>
>> Bear
>>
>> On 12/25/2020 1:12:36 AM, David Friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com> 
>> wrote:
>> I made some marzipan this evening to go in the stolen my daughter is
>> making. Her comment was that it wasn't marzipan, it was khushkananaj
>> filling which, unlike marzipan, she likes. The question is what is the
>> difference — in particular, is this a difference between the period
>> version and modern marzipan?
>>
>> I was working from the description in Martino, complicated by the fact
>> that he was going on to combine it with wafers and do things with it.
>> His initial process, which I followed, simply consisted of grinding
>> blanched almonds, combining with an equal weight of sugar and some rose
>> water and grinding it all together. Are there other ingredients in
>> modern marzipan? In period marzipan?
>>
>> The one difference I observed was that I didn't get the almonds as
>> finely ground as they are in marzipan I have had, but that should have
>> only affected texture, and Rebecca's comment was about taste.
>>
>> -- 
>> David Friedman/Cariadoc
>> www.daviddfriedman.com
>> http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
>>
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-- 
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

-- 
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/