I had my first taste of marzipan at the age of 20 in Manila, the Philippines where I was learning to make bakery products. They were beautiful little things colored and shaped like little fruits. Looked so delicious and tasted like - wax. From that day on, I never had any inclination to ever eat another marzipan. Do not know why but they reminded me of the song “lemon tree, very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet but the fruits of the poor lemon is impossible to eat”.
So when Hendrik told me that the best marzipan shop in the world is in Lubeck, it did not excite me one bit. The marzipans in the shop – Niederegger were lovely and I had expected that. I bought some as gifts but none for my own consumption for I never want to eat another ball of wax. For me, they were all for show. How could anyone, consumed them with relish?
But it seemed to stir fond memories for my friend, how some of his best childhood moments were defined by the receiving and consuming of – wax. When I thought of durian, I forgave him for there was this famous food writer who would gladly chewed at wriggling grubs and rotted meat but balked at what we thought as the closest fruit to God. Except it would be of no use for Adam to cover anything.
As we walked away, Hendrik offered me a piece from the box he eagerly tore up to get at them. He seemed to be badly in need of a marzipan fix. I would rather be addicted to smelly tofu any day. Apprehensively, I took a nibble, then a bite. Then I cried.
It is nothing like the marzipan someone poisoned me with when I was 20! The rich almond flavor combined with the chocolate to give a taste Adam would sin for. I cried because I wanted to murder the guy who showed me that marzipan and wax was the same. He robbed my youth of marzipan memories. I thought of what other gifts to buy so I can reserve the precious few boxes to make up for my loss of innocence.
As the car pulled away, I cried again for how a faulty memory could wreck such great prejudice and injustice. And my mind strayed to the Jews as victims of war, to the black man as victims of slavery and to the weeping woman abandoned on a rainy day due to a misunderstanding. All because of the taste of a marzipan.
~~~~~~~~~"
(The above was not what I set out to write. It just happened. I found a lot of what I wanted to write could not be blended in so here are some additional facts. Marzipan was believed to originate from Persia but the city of Lubeck had a legend that marzipan was created during a siege where the only food left was stored almond and sugar. Whether that is true or not, Lubeck had a proud tradition stretching back more than 200 years. And manufacturers there still guaranteed their products to contain two-third almond by weight. Their reputation of a quality product is certainly well-deserved. Please go to the Niederegger website if you intend to find more about marzipan -)
http://www.niederegger.de/de/marzipanwelt/geschichte/geschichte.php
I gave this pair of cute marzipan pigs to a friend - she still cannot bring herself to eat them.
