Travel with Angela Lansbury: Marzipan Museum in Lubeck, Germany

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Marzipan Museum in Lubeck, Germany

Marzipan, made from ground almonds and sugar, one of my favourites. As a child I loved being given a marzipan sweet in the shape of a piece of fruit, which my parents would save for me from the petits fours when they went out in the evening to a wedding.

As an adult, I heard my late father, in his nineties, saying his favourite sweet was marzipan. I want to the supermarket to buy him some marzipan. He was a late onset diabetic. So I checked the sugar content. I found that the sugar content was as high as 50 per cent. I was shocked. Later, I went back for more and to my horror, the sugar content had gone up to 75! The solutions were to add more ground almonds to the coloured paste, and make a tiny sweet to go with tea or coffee.

I then looked at the various varieties sold in bars of chocolate covered marzipan in the newsagents in the London shops. We did a comparison of various brands which had different quantities of marzipan. We found that the consistency varied, from a smooth paste, a soft paste to a hard paste, and from soft marzipan to gritty.

The marzipans from Lubech and the have to abide by regulations about the quantity of almonds and sugar. Wiki explains succinctly.

GERMANY

Lubeck in Germany, one hour from Hamburg, has a marzipan museum. Niederegger

HUNGARY

Hungary has a marzipan museum, in Budapest, the capital city. The museum's name is the Szabo Marcipan Museum. The name Szabo is a common name in Hungary and means tailor. You may recognize the surname Szabo from the wartime heroine Violette Szabo from WW2.

Marzipan in London, from Waitrose

48 grams. One pound ninety five pence.

If you are not travelling to either of the museums this week, you might look at or buy marzipan in a supermarket such as Waitrose in London. If you cannot travel to the marzipan museum and its overseas shop, travel to your nearest supermarket, with new interest in a product which has travelled to meet you.