• Confections
• German Cuisine

Lubecker Marzipan

• Theme Group: Hanseatic League

• Source: Marzipan, Candy

Lubecker Marzipan is a traditional confection made from ground almonds and sugar. The chewy, soft dough can be made into many shapes, including potatoes, or loafs and dipped in chocolate. Government standards requires Lubecker Marzipan, a geographically protected product, to have a higher proportion of almonds to sugar than ordinary marzipan. Lubeck marzipan has a ratio of at least 70 parts marzipan paste and 30 parts sugar while Lubeck fine marzipan is made with a ratio of 90 parts marzipan paste and 10 parts sugar. - AsNotedIn

Now if anyone wishes to vent a little spite against me, or take a casual swipe at me, I can count on his bringing up my Luebeck origin and Luebeck marzipan. If some ill-wisher can think of nothing else, he invariably thinks of connecting me with comic marzipan and representing me as a marzipan baker. Such stuff goes by the name of literary satire. But it does not bother me ... and I certainly do not feel in the least insulted about the marzipan. In the first place it is a very tasty confection, and in the second place it is anything but trivial; rather it is remarkable and, as I have said, mysterious ... and if we examine this sweet more closely, this mixture of almonds, rosewater and sugar, the suspicion arises that it is originally oriental, a [Haremskonfekt] confection for the harem, and that in all probability the recipe for this barely digestible delicacy came to Luebeck from the Orient by way of Venice ... and it turns out that those wits are not so wrong as they themselves think, that Death in Venice is really 'marzipan' although in a deeper sense than they ever meant it.

Places

• Lubeck Schleswig-Holstein