How Does Marzipan Work?

ties to some New Year's celebrations. Marsapan. Mars Pan is a confection made from ground almond meal mixed with some kind of sweetener and sometimes a binding agent like egg, until it forms a slightly sticky, mouldable paste that melts in your mouth, though with a little bit of chew to it. It can be flavored with things like rose water or pistachio, but it's often just almondy, sweet and nutty and almost cherry like. It's like a playto but

instead of being merely not poisonous, it's very tasty. A mars pan is commonly used for making everything from candy pieces to cake decorations. Because it's putty like, consistency means it can be formed in figurines that will hold their shape. It also shows up as a filling in pastries and cakes, but like Croissant's stolen and some versions of kincake, a plus in chocolates and chocolate bars, but today we're mostly

talking about the molded figurine applications of Marzapan. Though it's naturally a neutral ivory color, it's easily dyed or painted any color of the spectrum, giving creators a fantastic edible canvas. Experts say that its instagrammability is what made sales of Marzapan's skyrocket during the twenty nineteen holiday season. People have probably been making something like mars pan for as long

as we've had almonds and sweeteners. There are records of honeyed almond pastes going back to ancient Egypt, Greece, and Persia. Arab trade routes probably brought the recipe up through Europe, where treats closer to what we know as marspan today, and the word mars Pan itself developed around the fourteen hundreds, though at least three different places claim to have been home to the original what's now Toledo, Spain, Sicily, Italy,

and Lubeck, Germany. All three have strong traditions around mars Pan. Today, Sicilian candy makers produce a veritable corducopia of mars pan, shaped and colored to look like fruits and vegetables, from pears, peaches, tangerines and strawberries to corn on the cob, mushrooms, tomatoes, and artichokes. Especially around All Saints Day and All Souls Day. In Polato, one might make or receive a marspan eel around Christmas, a cute little eel buddy coiled into a

round ten hugging candied fruits. And throughout Germany, folks give gifts of mars pan pigs around New Year's as a wish for good luck in the coming year. This is a whole thing. There's a German saying a schweinin gahat, which literally means had a pig and culturally means that you've been lucky. A way of wishing someone luck in

German is to say fields fine, which literally means much pig. Supposedly, this all comes from medieval times when marspan was being developed in what's now Germany and Austria, when if you managed to breed a whole bunch of pigs in one year, or sometimes if you had any number of pigs at all,

that was a really fortunate and awesome thing. A further, in many societies that eat pork pigs are generally associated with winter celebrations because historically, before refrigeration, pigs would often be slaughtered at the beginning of winter and the meat preserved to help people make it through the colder, leaner months. Having the wealth and abundance to be able to do this was considered fortunate, so eating pork around the New

Year is often considered lucky. Think of dishes like pork and sauerkraut or hopin John, which is rice and peas cooked with a pork product, or even pork dumplings for the late winter lunar New Year, all of which are delicious, though none are cuter than those marzipan pigs, which are called Glukschwein, which literally means lucky pig. Today, one famous confectionery out of Lubec called Nita Egga Cafe, ships out about thirty kilos of marsapan every day, that's about sixty

five pounds. In the year two thousand, a local by the name of Berkhard Loi made the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest ever Marsapan pig. It weighed a ton and five kilos over two two hundred pounds. He reportedly kept it on display for six years before

someone accidentally bumped into it and broke it. If you'd like to make your own lucky Pigs or other Marzapan treats, there are lots of recipes online that involve either blanching and grinding almonds or using store bought almond meal, although many grocery stores also carry logs of pre made Marzapan and the baking aisle near the bags of chocolate chips and other baking ingredients and decorations. Whatever form your Marspan or other treats come in, we hear at Brainstuff wish

you good luck in the coming year. Today's episode is based on the article Marspan is the sweet Almond Treat You Need this Holiday on HowStuffWorks dot com, written by Stephanie Vermilion, and on a couple episodes of my other podcast saver Co written by me and Annie Reese. The episodes are called the Marspan Episode is Shaping Up and New Year's Food Traditions If you want to go a

little deeper. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.