December 24, 2021 • 37 mins
These simple ground-almond candies are molded into fantastic shapes for the winter holidays and beyond. Anney and Lauren explore the history and culture of marzipan.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm more in Vocal Bam, and
today we have an episode for you about marzipan. Yes, oh,
I'm so excited to talk about this one. I will
say this one is fun with pronunciations in multiple languages.
Normally we at least get relegated to one. Yeah. Usually
(00:31):
it's only me feeling really silly and incapable of pronunciation
in like two languages tops like English and one bonus one. Yes,
this one is like four or five. It's a lot.
We're going to do our best. But also it's really
really cool. I've loved looking this up because I have
(00:53):
little to no experience with mar zippan to my not really, Oh,
it's so delightful. I okay, I will say I had
little to new experience with marzipan until until maybe about
ten years ago. I encountered this box of of of
pretty little fruit shaped candies at some like grocery store
(01:16):
holiday display, and I was like, those are cute, and
I like looked at the box and saw that they
were made with almonds, and I love almonds, so I
bought it and then just became obsessed. Uh, it's like
one of my favorite candies. I mean almonds. Almonds are
one of my favorite flavors, so like, yeah, it's up there. Yeah,
(01:39):
I mean they're adorable. I had to say, I really
enjoyed looking through all of the pictures of all of
the shapes people have made them into. It is. It
is a true delight. It is so I'm very very
excited to learn more and hopefully acquire some. Yeah. Yes, uh,
(02:01):
January twelve is apparently National Marzipan Day here in the
United States, so coming up, Yeah, this comes out. We're
like on the correct end of this for once. Yeah, yeah,
or a little ahead of the curve. And yes, okay, well,
I guess that brings us to our question. Sure, marzipan.
(02:27):
What is it? Well, Marzipan is a type of candy
made from ground almonds mixed with sugar and sometimes other
stuff until it forms this slightly sticky moldible paste. Very moldible,
and it will really hold its shape once you mold it.
The sugar content means that it melts in your mouth
(02:48):
with a little bit of chew from both the sugar
and the almonds. It can be flavored with other things.
But but often it's just almondy, you know, like a
sweet and nutty with that kind of like almost like
cherry like note to it. Uh, mars Pan is like
it's like Plato, but instead of being nearly not poisonous,
(03:08):
it's actually delicious. What a food review that would be? Well,
I mean that that's you know, like that's the label
on Plato. It's like non toxic. It's like you can
eat this. It's not meant for that. But um so
(03:30):
marzipan is like the opposite, like you should eat this. Yes, yes, yes.
Recipes for marzipan vary, but generally what you're doing is
taken almonds, um, blanching them to remove the skins, and
then grinding them into a fine meal UM or I
mean you can like buy almond meal a dealer's choice um.
(03:50):
Then adding some powdered sugar and probably some liquid sugar
like a honey or corn syrup or maybe a sugar
syrup that you've cooked down yourself from old ability. You
can also add egg white. It will help firm up
the structure in there, and you can flavor them with
things like some some almond oil or extract some vanilla,
rose water, orange blossom water kind of gentle stuff like
(04:13):
that made a little bit of ground. Pistachio is common
as well, um, but they are often just plain. And
then color it because it's going to be naturally like
a neutral ivory color. You can color it with food
coloring or apply food safe paints or powders to the
surface and yeah, shape it into dang near whatever you want. Um.
(04:34):
It's used as a candy on its own, um, as
a decoration on other desserts, um, and as a like
more edible uh option instead of fondant for wrapping cakes. Um.
It's like a less it's it's a little bit less,
like totally smooth and sheeny like you can get with
(04:54):
a fondant, but so much more delicious. I I believe you.
I believe you. Oh every time I encounter fond and
I'm like, this is pretty, but geez, why coming for you?
Fond it savor It's coming to you. Uh. Mars Span
(05:16):
also shows up as a filling in pastries and cakes
like croissants and stolen and um. Some versions of kingcake
also in chocolates and chocolate bars. And although you can
make mars pan yourself, it's not that hard. Um. It
is often purchased in just like a big old log
like a big old plastic or foil wrapped logo marzipan
(05:38):
that you can then work however you would like to.
Marzipan is a popular Christmas and holiday confection the world over,
and it's also the name of a character in the
Nutcracker ballet. Uh yeah, it's a it's sometimes less having
to do with the Nutcracker. More that that that first
thing a crafty thing for kids around Christmas or winter holidays,
(05:59):
like a like like molding marzipan snowmen and and and
eule logs, stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, I have a
lot of traditions do involve shaping marzipan into specific shapes,
according to some things I read in Norway. In Germany,
there's a tradition of giving people marzipan pigs to wish
them luck. Listeners, please let us know. Yeah, yeah, I
(06:22):
think this is a New Year's thing. We talked about
it in our New Year's Foods episode in the way back.
But yeah, in Germany and Austria, I think as well,
they're called a gluck sh Fine, I'm not sure if
I'm saying that correctly. Uh yeah, yeah, though though these
these little good luck pigs can also be chocolate instead
of marzipan. I don't know. Uh. Apparently marzipan eels are
(06:46):
traditional in Toledo, Spain. Um. I've seen them. I've seen
them pictured in um, in these round tins, um, like
the size of cookie tins, you know, like for for
like shortbread or or those those those butter cookies, those
little Danish butter cookies. Yeah. Um so so in a
in a round cookie tin, and then the marzipan is
shaped into this like really cute eel that looks a
(07:08):
little bit like a dragon with scales and everything, and
it's wrapped around a little horde of candied fruit. So cute. Yeah,
but more more more commonly in the States at any rate, um,
and around many other places, miniature, varyingly realistic fruits and
(07:30):
vegetables are kind of the mainstay of marzipan design. Um.
Anything you can imagine strawberries, apples, peaches, cherries, plums, pears, oranges, lemons, lines, apricots, mangoes. Sure. Um,
but also like eggplant or carrots, or avocado or cauliflower,
or things like walnuts or chestnuts, which I really love.
(07:53):
I feel like people get really clever with like this
is not made of this thing. This is what it
looks like. I do enjoy that as well. Yeah, there's um,
there's a whole category of marzipan flowers. UM. You can
also do marzipan animals. UM. I've seen snails and clams
(08:15):
and muscles and octopuses and and goldfish and starfish. Um,
marzipan lambs for Easter. Uh. Marzipan can be shaped like
other foods. I've seen marzipan shaped like croissants and doughnuts
and pizza and spaghetti and hot dogs and hamburgers and
French fries. It's so silly. I adore it. It's a
(08:41):
whole marzipan. We're all out there. It is. It is UM.
And also yeah, although many candy makers do keep the
flavor profile pretty simple, UM, and and dress up marzipan
through these decorative means. Um. You can incorporate any dang
flavor you'd like. Um. I've seen uh uh like rum
(09:02):
or whiskey or or brandy or various fruit flavored marzipan's
pa colato marzipan UM and also also different cultures around
the world replace almonds in marsipan with whatever is locally available.
From like peanuts to pine nuts to pistachios, two cashews. Um.
In Germany, there is an alternative to marzipan called per zippan.
(09:25):
I'm not sure if I'm not I didn't look at
the pronunciation. That's what it looks like. I'm sorry, I'm
moving on. Um. It's it's made with a ground apricot
pits um, which are to be fair closely related to almonds. Huh,
all right, well what about the nutrition. You know, there's
a lot of sugar involved in there. Um, But almonds
(09:46):
do have a good punch of protein and fat. Their
treat their treat treats are nice. We're a big fan
of treats over here. M We do have some numbers
for you. We do. On an average day, the famous
Nida Egga cafe ships thirty kilograms about sixty six pounds
of their product to over forty countries, and they promised
(10:10):
that they're marzipan is two thirds almonds by weight, high quality. Yes. Um.
In the United States, a product labeled marzipan only has
to be uh more than a quarter almonds by weight,
and apparently, under European Union laws, a product called marzipan
has to be at least four almond oil by weight. Anyway,
(10:35):
um burkhard Lloyd made the Guinness Book of World Records
for largest marzipan pig. It wait a ton and five
kilos are over two thousand, two hundred pounds. I'll be honest.
The picture of it kind of creeped me out. Okay,
now that's fair. Is a big, kind of creepy big.
(10:56):
The small ones are very cute. They're so cute. Um
Lloyd kept the mars pan pig on display for six
years before someone accidentally bumped into it and broke it.
Oh no, he had a very good attitude about it.
He was kind of that's the way the marzipan crumbles.
Um lloy. Also, uh, he created the first and only
(11:19):
marzipan dress complete with twenty five thousand prowlins pralines. See
our episode about that for pronunciation issues and I and
I suspect that in this context, what that means is
what we would call chocolates, like like filled chocolates in
the United States. M M yeah. Um. During during the
(11:40):
first week of February, there is um a festival for
St Agatha in Sicily that features a lot of marzipan treats,
including um the two. The two that I read about
um that are particularly popular are olivet which are marzipan
that are shaped and colored to look like green olives. Um,
and a dessert called st Agatha's Breasts. Follow with me
(12:04):
for a minute. So these are okay. These are pastries
made with um, usually pistachio marzipan blanketing, a mound of
sweetened ricotta and um sponge cake or pastry crust or
chocolate um shaped like this perfectly round breast um, complete
with a little candied cherry nipple on top. Um. And
this is this is because the story of st Agatha
(12:27):
says that around about two fifty this the Sicilian girl
Agatha kept her Christian faith and rejected the advances of
this Roman ruler who was super into her, and he
had her arrested and had her breasts amputated and she died. Um.
And so Saint Agatha, celebrating her her devotion to Christ. Uh,
(12:49):
they have these boobcakes um and wow yeah um the
olives the olive that are are because part of this
story is that is that an olive tree sprang up
to shelter her during her flight from arrest. Wow, that's
hardcore for a marzipan I agree very much. Um, at
(13:19):
any rate, at any rate. Norwegian American reports that Norwegians
eat million marzipan candies every year. Mm hmm. Despite this,
if you happen to be thinking about how almonds contain
a precursor to cyanide and that eating all that marzipan
(13:40):
might be dangerous, worry not. According to The Guardian, you
would have to eat like thirty five kilos of marzipan.
It's like seventy seven pounds in a single sitting to
ingest a lethal dose. So you're doing okay. Wow. That
was a real roller coaster because I was like, this
is a concern I should have. Oh okay, oh no,
(14:00):
it's not that. Yeah, it's not a concern. You should
have your fine, got it? Cool? Um in Budapest in
a candy maker through a retro candy festival featuring, among
other things, a hundred and fifty different flavors of marzipan.
Oh um. Well, sales of marzipan and the US shot
(14:25):
up during the twenty nineteen holiday season. The spike was
attributed to younger folks who liked the visual aspect of marzipan,
perhaps for social media, along with a nostalgia factor. A
lot of people wrote, you know, my grandparents liked this
or they introduced me to it, something like that. I
was telling Lauren that reading that article feels very strange now,
(14:46):
just because it was right before the pandemic. And you're like,
you didn't know, you didn't know, You're so innocent. Yes, yes, wow,
we have quite a history on this one. We do, um,
and we're going to get into that. But first we're
going to get into a quick break for a word
(15:08):
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes,
thank you. So almonds are a different podcast, that's oh yeah, yes,
it's gonna be a huge undertaking, I suspect, so we
(15:32):
shall undertake it at a different time. However, very briefly,
almonds are old and people have been eating them all
over for a long time. UM. They are thought to
be native to the Mediterranean and perhaps Asia, and I
could have I could have sworn that we had done
(15:52):
an episode on them, but we have not. So there
you go, There you go. That is the once you
have done a certain number podcast, it's the fun question
you get to ask, have we already done it? Alas um? Okay,
but marzipan the earliest known written records of marzipan traced
(16:15):
back to Spain and Italy out of the sixteenth century,
but historians believe it is older than that. For instance,
there is a mention of an almond paste used as
an aphrodisiac in the collection of Middle Eastern Stories one
thousand and one Nights, compiled between the eighth century. Um.
I think it was mentioned outside of being an aphrodisiac
(16:37):
as well, but it was in there, and several sources
theorized that this treat made its way to Europe from
the Middle East via trade. Spain had an almond and
sugar based treat called poster Reggio at least as far
back as eleven fifty. Going back to the ancient Greeks,
they may have enjoyed a paste of honey and almonds.
(16:57):
Some people trace marzipan to Persia, others to ancient Egypt.
History indicates that at times these marzipan adjacent treats and
marzipan itself were used medicinally as well. Okay, okay, but um.
One of the most popularly told more modern stories about
where marzipan comes from places Marzipan's creation in Lubeck, Germany
(17:21):
during the fifteenth century. In fourteen o seven, the city
was under siege and in the grip of a famine,
making flour for bread making um scarce. To alleviate the problem,
the Senate tasked bakers with finding a replacement. Enterprising chefs
got the idea to combine eggs, sugar, and ground up
almonds arriving at marzipan. Yes, okay um. And this is
(17:46):
also around the time when a farmer having a lot
of pigs was a sign that things were going well
for that farmer, and the pigs would often be slaughtered
at the beginning of winter, the meat preserved to make
it through the colder months. We've talked about this before
about how because of that, pigs came to symbolize luck,
especially at winter and spring holiday celebrations at the time.
(18:10):
Even if Lubeck wasn't the birthplace of marzipan, it was
a big trade city and the candy did become popular there,
so it might have become known for marzipan, and makers
of the treat guarded their recipes vigilantly. Yes um. And
actually some historians speculate that shaping marzipan like a pig
(18:34):
originated around this time as well. Okay, yes, however, oh,
this is just one story and a lot of European
cities claimed to be the birthplace of marzipan, and the
stories reportedly happened over a wide range of time, making
penning this one down tricky. Toledo, Spain and Sicily, Italy
(18:55):
are two of the big contenders. Like their tourism websites,
are pretty pretty honed into it. Yeah, yeah, yes, the
word itself has Romance language roots, as opposed to Germanic
ones pen or penny meaning bread in Spanish and Italians.
There's that argument. Apparently Germany still celebrates a Christmas tradition
(19:19):
of molding mars pan into the shape of bread, a
treat called marzipan brought so again, listeners please uh yeah,
and I'm not sure, I'm not sure of the German
pronunciation of marzipan. Um uh. But so this is a
that's just fascinating to me because that basically means like
(19:41):
almond bread bread. Yeah. But the etymology on this one
is really fun because of similar sounding words and related
meanings across languages and time, all kind of intersecting. So like, yeah,
it you're if you're talking about about bread, right, Germanic
(20:02):
words for bread have that brewer sound yeah and and
uh as in world Um. Latin words for bread have
that paw sound as in as in pond um. But
where exactly anyone got marzipan is debated um, because there
were also a number of both Latin based UM and
(20:25):
Arabic words in circulation in medieval times, with um pond
or bon meaning box, and Martha or marza meaning um
candy or small or spice. So you had these words
like uh like like mota panas meaning small box or
Martha bond meaning spice box. Around the same time that
(20:48):
that that both Um, Germanic and Romance languages started calling
this particular almond confection marzipan or some very close variant
they're of in in whatever language they were speaking. UM,
and like, the more I read into it, the more
it made me think that like probably a product that
(21:10):
was being made across this whole multi linguistic area suddenly
popularized under the Italian based name for whatever reason. Not
not not sure, not sure, I don't know. I couldn't
tell you. UM. I can say that when um, When
English speakers Middle English speakers first started writing about marzipan,
(21:34):
circle of fourteen hundreds they called it march pain um,
based on like march and pain okay um p a
y any and they had already borrowed a couple of
French words, even though the word bread was also in
circulation at the time. Uh Middle English speakers had already
(21:54):
borrowed a couple of French words for dough or bread
to come up with words like paste and pastry and
pain um, all of which we're referencing these fancy Ish
Newish soft crusted pies or or other things made out
of dough. So anyway, I love it, I love it um.
(22:23):
A lot of these origin stories of marzipan do feature
similar elements um, one key one being famine, another being
scarcity um. The Toledo version credits the nuns of Convento
di San Clemente with the invention. According to legend, the
nuns used the only ingredients they had on hand, water, sugar,
(22:44):
and almond flour to create marzipan in order to stave
off a starvation during the Battaya de las Navez de
Tolusa of twelve twelve c um. And I feel like
that's a story we hear a lot of, like a battle.
It's understiege, scarcity what we eat. Yeah, yeah, which, to
(23:05):
be fair, I'm sure happened any number of times. Yep.
I mean on a much lesser scale. That's like me
during the pandemic of like, Okay, I have these five ingredients,
were we go, something's gonna happen and I'm gonna eat
it no matter what. Um. Okay. So I just want
(23:28):
to put in a note about this because I found
it really interesting. The traditional Easter holiday cake cassada, which
I have never heard of, but I understand people are
very passionate about it, is thought to have beginnings in
sicily Um, dating around the tenth century, though it is
much contested. Cassada, or at least one popular version of it,
(23:49):
is ringed with green marzapan decorated with candied fruits. According
to historian Clifford Right, cassada was so delicious and seductive
that is late as fIF teen seventy four, the Diocese
of Mazzarada Vallo had to prohibit its making at the
monastery during the Holy Week because the nuns preferred to
bake and eat it then pray, oh that's so good.
(24:16):
Also like Heckiah, those nuns get it. Ladies love it
so a different episode. It sounds super interesting, yea, but yeah,
I had to, I had to include that tidbit. It's beautiful. Yes.
So these European powers, particularly Spain and Italy, exported marzipan
(24:38):
to their colonies around the world, including regions in South
America and islands in Southeast Asia, where marzipan is still
popular today. Marzipan arrived in Norway in the eighteen hundreds,
or at least by the eighteen hundreds, and was popular
there by the nineteen hundreds. The Nita Egga Cafe was
founded in eighteen o six and not long after was
(24:59):
providing sweet to the rich and powerful. Due to the
ability to shape marzipan, it was a popular thing at
banquets um as almost a storytelling or symbolic food, which
makes sense. With the Industrial revolution and improvements and food
technologies and transportation, as well as inventions and improvements around
(25:22):
things like food dies and dust um made production and
shaping and coloring of marzipan. All of that made it easier.
J G. Nita Egga and Company were shipping about thirty
five tons up there four hundred marzipan products a day
by ninety nine, with a significant surgeon sales during the
holidays mhm in In an attempt to help control food
(25:48):
fraud and contamination in German marzipan. This group of German
researchers published an article about how they adapted the technology
used in crime scene DNA and analysis two genetically identify
marzipan contaminations with with stuff like ground apricot kernels at
(26:09):
the level of zero point one percent. Wow, that's so good.
It is a very serious paper that was published in
the American Chemical Society's one of their journals, and I
it makes me very happy. Now I want like a
(26:32):
c s I show when it's like c SI marzipan
see see s I could totally it could there could
totally be like a c s I food fraud Yes,
in fact, in fact, And now I don't know why
there hasn't been c s I call us. I think
we brought this up in past episodes too, so no
excuse zero. It's like you guys aren't even listening to
(26:56):
the show, which is unfathomable, in fact, unfathomable. Okay. So lastly,
I wanted to include this UM in the Colonial Williamsburg website,
which made me laugh very hard. UM posted a recipe
(27:19):
for a marzipan hedgehog, and it looks fantastic, I have
to say. Uh. They based it on a recipe from
Handed Glasses books The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy.
The recipe went like this. Take two pounds of blanched almonds.
Beat them well in a mortar with a little Canarian
orange flower water to keep them from oiling. Make them
(27:42):
into a stiff paste. Then beat in the yolks of
twelve eggs, leave out five of the whites. Put to
it a pint of cream, sweetened with sugar. Put in
a half pound of sweet butter melted. Set it on
a furnace or slow fire, and keep it constantly stirring
until it is stiff enough to be made in the
form of a hedgehog. Then stick it full of blanched almonds,
(28:02):
slit and suck up like the bristles of a hedgehog.
Then put it into a dish. Take a pint of
cream and the yolks of four eggs, beat up, sweetened
with sugar to your palate. Stir them together over a
slow fire until it is quite hot. Then pour it
around the hedgehog and a dish and let it stand
till this cold and serve it up, or a rich
(28:24):
gass foot jelly made clear and good poured into the
dish around the hedgehog. When it is cold. It looks
pretty and makes a neat dish, or it looks pretty
in the middle of a table for supper. This is amazing.
Literally everything about this is amazing. I love it. I
love it. Let's make a hedgehog. I just I love hedgehogs,
(28:48):
and I love marzipan, and I love old recipes. Yes,
and I love that. For some reason, this marzipan hedgehog
like necessarily needs to be like swimming in some kind
of bath of custard or jelly. Mm hmm. I love it.
(29:09):
I love it as well. It is excellent. Go look
at a picture of listeners. Do it? Do it right now?
I mean if you're driving or something, don't do it
right now, but like, like, as soon as you are
safely able to um. The image results range from very
adorable to a lot Shall we say yes? Uh, it
(29:35):
was well worth the Google image search. Yes, it is
chef's kiss Um. It does make a neat dish. Indeed,
it does, it does. I would welcome this on any
holiday table. Well, on that note, that is what we
(29:56):
have to say about Mars of Haan four. Now it
is um we we have some listener mail for you,
but first we've got one more quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
thank you, and we're back with It was like changing shapes,
(30:26):
and then I was like, suck the hedgehog. And then
I was thinking, Mars a pan the hedgehog. It needs
to be like the sad, clumsy sidekick of Sonic. All right,
we are We're we're dropping gold today, gold amazing ideas
(30:47):
into the universe. Come on, mm hmmm, okay, Chad wrote,
I was kind of surprised that you didn't know of
disco fries and wanted to write in and share. As
I was listen in to the Putine episode and mentally
drooling over the visions of gravy, duck, cheese and fries
running through my head, I kept thinking of my childhood
experiences with disco fries, which I considered the working class
(31:11):
are poor man's poutine? Well I do now. As a kid,
they were pure heaven. I could get them back then
I would order them whenever our family went to a
place like an a MW A locally owned d Q
or the Skating Rink. I never saw them on a
menu anywhere else, and it was a rare treat when
we dine at any of these places. Your episode briefly
transported me back to the memories of those fries covered
(31:34):
in gravy and tiny bits of well, who knows what
it was, probably smam. It's been a few decades since
I had some disco fries, and I had to smile
when you two debated what they were and did not
know about them. Thanks for listening. Such an emotional food
memory for me. On a relaxing Sunday, it was a
cooking day and I made a dish of tie yellow
curry with delicata squash, onions, cauliflower, and garlic, served with
(31:57):
Christmas Lama beans from Rancho Gordo, which is not the
same thing as disco fries, but it certainly hit the spot.
That does sound delicious. All of that sounds delicious. Oh goodness,
that's Skating Rink. I will tell you did not have
anything like that. You've got the nachos, but it was
just like chips that they put the sad cheese. Yeah
(32:20):
we cheese like in yeah scare quotes. Um, yeah, now
I'm trying to think. I I I know that we
had like now in laters and yeah, like sad nachos
at the skating rink, but I can't remember any other food.
I'm sure that there was other food I don't know,
(32:41):
but no regional little regional specialties like this. UM make
me so happy when like, yeah, you go like three
states over and people are like, what are you talking about?
But you're like, this is a key part of my childhood.
What do you mean? What am I talking about? So good? Yes, yes,
And we really appreciate your listeners letting us know about
(33:07):
Oh it's wonderful. Um. Florian wrote, Hello, fellow bacteria and
yeast poop enthusiasts. Uh baby ba ba bappy. There's an
acronym anyway, Lauren and Anti Ri SARONI, I just wanted
to share a fond Christmas memory with you, which resurfaced
(33:28):
while doing my favorite activity, sitting in an armchair knitting
socks while simultaneously enjoying a cup of hot cocao listening
to your podcast. It was some days before Christmas, about
twenty years ago. My friends and I were visiting a
comparatively small Christmas market in southern Germany. Um, you are
probably aware of the concept and the popularity of Central
European Christmas markets. They mostly consist of wooden booths selling
(33:53):
outrageously expensive crafts, um more mass produced sad trinkets than
you could ever roll your eyes at under the Christmas tree,
and most importantly so many wonderful foods and beverages. And
when they are not reasonably canceled due to COVID, they
are usually packed with people in the evening hours. Not
just packed, but crammed, stuffed, and compacted like clothing in
(34:15):
the suitcase of both equally prudent and indecisive person prior
to a long vacation to a place with an unpredictable climate.
A jeez, that's very personal, okay. Um. After about an
hour of being squeezed into an uneven block of young adults, Um,
we were desperate for a breather, while still unwilling to
(34:36):
forfeit our progress of at least looking at each booth.
Once our gaze fell about an area of almost complete
absence of any form of life, which radiated in a
circle from a single wooden hut, we assumed that this
was probably the outlet of some obnoxious cult and feeling bold,
we took our chances. After a few cautious strides, it
(34:57):
hit us we had ventured into the layer of a cheesemonger.
Even though my friends were more adventurous than me when
it came to fragrant cheeses, they shared my experience of
being totally overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the smell.
I dare not to guess which type of cheese might
have been the main contributor, but the sum of it
(35:17):
was as amazing as revolting. An unseen entity filled the place,
wafting out to us with its vaporous arms, pinching our
throats and noses until our skin turned pale and our
veins protruded blue, making us one of its own. I
believe it could have been weaponized or used as part
of a defensive system, a roke of force field. It
(35:40):
had to be smelled to be believed. We finally managed
to reinsert ourselves into the crowd and eventually managed to
buy a few bags of candied almonds, which we then
used as respirators for the rest of the day. This is,
of course, not to disrespect any fragrant cheese or the
people making and or enjoying it. But I have never
(36:01):
since seen a dense crowd being repelled like bacteria from
penicillium and a Petri dish. So I wanted to share
my experience with you, and of course my greatest respect
to the person running the cheese booth on that specific
Christmas market and people in similar circumstances. I hope that
there are always people braver than me, reaching beyond the
(36:23):
veil and reaping the treasure of their cheese ventures. Bravo.
Excellently written and read, Lauren. Oh that's so great. Thank you.
That is hilarious. It's hilarious. Everyone was like, oh, like, nope,
(36:48):
just like a crowd collective like mmmmm, wide birth. I
love that. Oh my goodness, how delightful, how delightful all around? Yes, absolutely,
and it's always such a delight to hear from you listeners.
Thank you so much for writing. We do appreciate it,
(37:09):
and if you would like to write to us, you
can our emails hello at savor pod dot com. We're
also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at savor pod, and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, you can visit the
i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super
(37:30):
producers Dylan Fagin and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm more in Vocal Bam, and
today we have an episode for you about marzipan. Yes, oh,
I'm so excited to talk about this one. I will
say this one is fun with pronunciations in multiple languages.
Normally we at least get relegated to one. Yeah. Usually
(00:31):
it's only me feeling really silly and incapable of pronunciation
in like two languages tops like English and one bonus one. Yes,
this one is like four or five. It's a lot.
We're going to do our best. But also it's really
really cool. I've loved looking this up because I have
(00:53):
little to no experience with mar zippan to my not really, Oh,
it's so delightful. I okay, I will say I had
little to new experience with marzipan until until maybe about
ten years ago. I encountered this box of of of
pretty little fruit shaped candies at some like grocery store
(01:16):
holiday display, and I was like, those are cute, and
I like looked at the box and saw that they
were made with almonds, and I love almonds, so I
bought it and then just became obsessed. Uh, it's like
one of my favorite candies. I mean almonds. Almonds are
one of my favorite flavors, so like, yeah, it's up there. Yeah,
(01:39):
I mean they're adorable. I had to say, I really
enjoyed looking through all of the pictures of all of
the shapes people have made them into. It is. It
is a true delight. It is so I'm very very
excited to learn more and hopefully acquire some. Yeah. Yes, uh,
(02:01):
January twelve is apparently National Marzipan Day here in the
United States, so coming up, Yeah, this comes out. We're
like on the correct end of this for once. Yeah, yeah,
or a little ahead of the curve. And yes, okay, well,
I guess that brings us to our question. Sure, marzipan.
(02:27):
What is it? Well, Marzipan is a type of candy
made from ground almonds mixed with sugar and sometimes other
stuff until it forms this slightly sticky moldible paste. Very moldible,
and it will really hold its shape once you mold it.
The sugar content means that it melts in your mouth
(02:48):
with a little bit of chew from both the sugar
and the almonds. It can be flavored with other things.
But but often it's just almondy, you know, like a
sweet and nutty with that kind of like almost like
cherry like note to it. Uh, mars Pan is like
it's like Plato, but instead of being nearly not poisonous,
(03:08):
it's actually delicious. What a food review that would be? Well,
I mean that that's you know, like that's the label
on Plato. It's like non toxic. It's like you can
eat this. It's not meant for that. But um so
(03:30):
marzipan is like the opposite, like you should eat this. Yes, yes, yes.
Recipes for marzipan vary, but generally what you're doing is
taken almonds, um, blanching them to remove the skins, and
then grinding them into a fine meal UM or I
mean you can like buy almond meal a dealer's choice um.
(03:50):
Then adding some powdered sugar and probably some liquid sugar
like a honey or corn syrup or maybe a sugar
syrup that you've cooked down yourself from old ability. You
can also add egg white. It will help firm up
the structure in there, and you can flavor them with
things like some some almond oil or extract some vanilla,
rose water, orange blossom water kind of gentle stuff like
(04:13):
that made a little bit of ground. Pistachio is common
as well, um, but they are often just plain. And
then color it because it's going to be naturally like
a neutral ivory color. You can color it with food
coloring or apply food safe paints or powders to the
surface and yeah, shape it into dang near whatever you want. Um.
(04:34):
It's used as a candy on its own, um, as
a decoration on other desserts, um, and as a like
more edible uh option instead of fondant for wrapping cakes. Um.
It's like a less it's it's a little bit less,
like totally smooth and sheeny like you can get with
(04:54):
a fondant, but so much more delicious. I I believe you.
I believe you. Oh every time I encounter fond and
I'm like, this is pretty, but geez, why coming for you?
Fond it savor It's coming to you. Uh. Mars Span
(05:16):
also shows up as a filling in pastries and cakes
like croissants and stolen and um. Some versions of kingcake
also in chocolates and chocolate bars. And although you can
make mars pan yourself, it's not that hard. Um. It
is often purchased in just like a big old log
like a big old plastic or foil wrapped logo marzipan
(05:38):
that you can then work however you would like to.
Marzipan is a popular Christmas and holiday confection the world over,
and it's also the name of a character in the
Nutcracker ballet. Uh yeah, it's a it's sometimes less having
to do with the Nutcracker. More that that that first
thing a crafty thing for kids around Christmas or winter holidays,
(05:59):
like a like like molding marzipan snowmen and and and
eule logs, stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, I have a
lot of traditions do involve shaping marzipan into specific shapes,
according to some things I read in Norway. In Germany,
there's a tradition of giving people marzipan pigs to wish
them luck. Listeners, please let us know. Yeah, yeah, I
(06:22):
think this is a New Year's thing. We talked about
it in our New Year's Foods episode in the way back.
But yeah, in Germany and Austria, I think as well,
they're called a gluck sh Fine, I'm not sure if
I'm saying that correctly. Uh yeah, yeah, though though these
these little good luck pigs can also be chocolate instead
of marzipan. I don't know. Uh. Apparently marzipan eels are
(06:46):
traditional in Toledo, Spain. Um. I've seen them. I've seen
them pictured in um, in these round tins, um, like
the size of cookie tins, you know, like for for
like shortbread or or those those those butter cookies, those
little Danish butter cookies. Yeah. Um so so in a
in a round cookie tin, and then the marzipan is
shaped into this like really cute eel that looks a
(07:08):
little bit like a dragon with scales and everything, and
it's wrapped around a little horde of candied fruit. So cute. Yeah,
but more more more commonly in the States at any rate, um,
and around many other places, miniature, varyingly realistic fruits and
(07:30):
vegetables are kind of the mainstay of marzipan design. Um.
Anything you can imagine strawberries, apples, peaches, cherries, plums, pears, oranges, lemons, lines, apricots, mangoes. Sure. Um,
but also like eggplant or carrots, or avocado or cauliflower,
or things like walnuts or chestnuts, which I really love.
(07:53):
I feel like people get really clever with like this
is not made of this thing. This is what it
looks like. I do enjoy that as well. Yeah, there's um,
there's a whole category of marzipan flowers. UM. You can
also do marzipan animals. UM. I've seen snails and clams
(08:15):
and muscles and octopuses and and goldfish and starfish. Um,
marzipan lambs for Easter. Uh. Marzipan can be shaped like
other foods. I've seen marzipan shaped like croissants and doughnuts
and pizza and spaghetti and hot dogs and hamburgers and
French fries. It's so silly. I adore it. It's a
(08:41):
whole marzipan. We're all out there. It is. It is UM.
And also yeah, although many candy makers do keep the
flavor profile pretty simple, UM, and and dress up marzipan
through these decorative means. Um. You can incorporate any dang
flavor you'd like. Um. I've seen uh uh like rum
(09:02):
or whiskey or or brandy or various fruit flavored marzipan's
pa colato marzipan UM and also also different cultures around
the world replace almonds in marsipan with whatever is locally available.
From like peanuts to pine nuts to pistachios, two cashews. Um.
In Germany, there is an alternative to marzipan called per zippan.
(09:25):
I'm not sure if I'm not I didn't look at
the pronunciation. That's what it looks like. I'm sorry, I'm
moving on. Um. It's it's made with a ground apricot
pits um, which are to be fair closely related to almonds. Huh,
all right, well what about the nutrition. You know, there's
a lot of sugar involved in there. Um, But almonds
(09:46):
do have a good punch of protein and fat. Their
treat their treat treats are nice. We're a big fan
of treats over here. M We do have some numbers
for you. We do. On an average day, the famous
Nida Egga cafe ships thirty kilograms about sixty six pounds
of their product to over forty countries, and they promised
(10:10):
that they're marzipan is two thirds almonds by weight, high quality. Yes. Um.
In the United States, a product labeled marzipan only has
to be uh more than a quarter almonds by weight,
and apparently, under European Union laws, a product called marzipan
has to be at least four almond oil by weight. Anyway,
(10:35):
um burkhard Lloyd made the Guinness Book of World Records
for largest marzipan pig. It wait a ton and five
kilos are over two thousand, two hundred pounds. I'll be honest.
The picture of it kind of creeped me out. Okay,
now that's fair. Is a big, kind of creepy big.
(10:56):
The small ones are very cute. They're so cute. Um
Lloyd kept the mars pan pig on display for six
years before someone accidentally bumped into it and broke it.
Oh no, he had a very good attitude about it.
He was kind of that's the way the marzipan crumbles.
Um lloy. Also, uh, he created the first and only
(11:19):
marzipan dress complete with twenty five thousand prowlins pralines. See
our episode about that for pronunciation issues and I and
I suspect that in this context, what that means is
what we would call chocolates, like like filled chocolates in
the United States. M M yeah. Um. During during the
(11:40):
first week of February, there is um a festival for
St Agatha in Sicily that features a lot of marzipan treats,
including um the two. The two that I read about
um that are particularly popular are olivet which are marzipan
that are shaped and colored to look like green olives. Um,
and a dessert called st Agatha's Breasts. Follow with me
(12:04):
for a minute. So these are okay. These are pastries
made with um, usually pistachio marzipan blanketing, a mound of
sweetened ricotta and um sponge cake or pastry crust or
chocolate um shaped like this perfectly round breast um, complete
with a little candied cherry nipple on top. Um. And
this is this is because the story of st Agatha
(12:27):
says that around about two fifty this the Sicilian girl
Agatha kept her Christian faith and rejected the advances of
this Roman ruler who was super into her, and he
had her arrested and had her breasts amputated and she died. Um.
And so Saint Agatha, celebrating her her devotion to Christ. Uh,
(12:49):
they have these boobcakes um and wow yeah um the
olives the olive that are are because part of this
story is that is that an olive tree sprang up
to shelter her during her flight from arrest. Wow, that's
hardcore for a marzipan I agree very much. Um, at
(13:19):
any rate, at any rate. Norwegian American reports that Norwegians
eat million marzipan candies every year. Mm hmm. Despite this,
if you happen to be thinking about how almonds contain
a precursor to cyanide and that eating all that marzipan
(13:40):
might be dangerous, worry not. According to The Guardian, you
would have to eat like thirty five kilos of marzipan.
It's like seventy seven pounds in a single sitting to
ingest a lethal dose. So you're doing okay. Wow. That
was a real roller coaster because I was like, this
is a concern I should have. Oh okay, oh no,
(14:00):
it's not that. Yeah, it's not a concern. You should
have your fine, got it? Cool? Um in Budapest in
a candy maker through a retro candy festival featuring, among
other things, a hundred and fifty different flavors of marzipan.
Oh um. Well, sales of marzipan and the US shot
(14:25):
up during the twenty nineteen holiday season. The spike was
attributed to younger folks who liked the visual aspect of marzipan,
perhaps for social media, along with a nostalgia factor. A
lot of people wrote, you know, my grandparents liked this
or they introduced me to it, something like that. I
was telling Lauren that reading that article feels very strange now,
(14:46):
just because it was right before the pandemic. And you're like,
you didn't know, you didn't know, You're so innocent. Yes, yes, wow,
we have quite a history on this one. We do, um,
and we're going to get into that. But first we're
going to get into a quick break for a word
(15:08):
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes,
thank you. So almonds are a different podcast, that's oh yeah, yes,
it's gonna be a huge undertaking, I suspect, so we
(15:32):
shall undertake it at a different time. However, very briefly,
almonds are old and people have been eating them all
over for a long time. UM. They are thought to
be native to the Mediterranean and perhaps Asia, and I
could have I could have sworn that we had done
(15:52):
an episode on them, but we have not. So there
you go, There you go. That is the once you
have done a certain number podcast, it's the fun question
you get to ask, have we already done it? Alas um? Okay,
but marzipan the earliest known written records of marzipan traced
(16:15):
back to Spain and Italy out of the sixteenth century,
but historians believe it is older than that. For instance,
there is a mention of an almond paste used as
an aphrodisiac in the collection of Middle Eastern Stories one
thousand and one Nights, compiled between the eighth century. Um.
I think it was mentioned outside of being an aphrodisiac
(16:37):
as well, but it was in there, and several sources
theorized that this treat made its way to Europe from
the Middle East via trade. Spain had an almond and
sugar based treat called poster Reggio at least as far
back as eleven fifty. Going back to the ancient Greeks,
they may have enjoyed a paste of honey and almonds.
(16:57):
Some people trace marzipan to Persia, others to ancient Egypt.
History indicates that at times these marzipan adjacent treats and
marzipan itself were used medicinally as well. Okay, okay, but um.
One of the most popularly told more modern stories about
where marzipan comes from places Marzipan's creation in Lubeck, Germany
(17:21):
during the fifteenth century. In fourteen o seven, the city
was under siege and in the grip of a famine,
making flour for bread making um scarce. To alleviate the problem,
the Senate tasked bakers with finding a replacement. Enterprising chefs
got the idea to combine eggs, sugar, and ground up
almonds arriving at marzipan. Yes, okay um. And this is
(17:46):
also around the time when a farmer having a lot
of pigs was a sign that things were going well
for that farmer, and the pigs would often be slaughtered
at the beginning of winter, the meat preserved to make
it through the colder months. We've talked about this before
about how because of that, pigs came to symbolize luck,
especially at winter and spring holiday celebrations at the time.
(18:10):
Even if Lubeck wasn't the birthplace of marzipan, it was
a big trade city and the candy did become popular there,
so it might have become known for marzipan, and makers
of the treat guarded their recipes vigilantly. Yes um. And
actually some historians speculate that shaping marzipan like a pig
(18:34):
originated around this time as well. Okay, yes, however, oh,
this is just one story and a lot of European
cities claimed to be the birthplace of marzipan, and the
stories reportedly happened over a wide range of time, making
penning this one down tricky. Toledo, Spain and Sicily, Italy
(18:55):
are two of the big contenders. Like their tourism websites,
are pretty pretty honed into it. Yeah, yeah, yes, the
word itself has Romance language roots, as opposed to Germanic
ones pen or penny meaning bread in Spanish and Italians.
There's that argument. Apparently Germany still celebrates a Christmas tradition
(19:19):
of molding mars pan into the shape of bread, a
treat called marzipan brought so again, listeners please uh yeah,
and I'm not sure, I'm not sure of the German
pronunciation of marzipan. Um uh. But so this is a
that's just fascinating to me because that basically means like
(19:41):
almond bread bread. Yeah. But the etymology on this one
is really fun because of similar sounding words and related
meanings across languages and time, all kind of intersecting. So like, yeah,
it you're if you're talking about about bread, right, Germanic
(20:02):
words for bread have that brewer sound yeah and and
uh as in world Um. Latin words for bread have
that paw sound as in as in pond um. But
where exactly anyone got marzipan is debated um, because there
were also a number of both Latin based UM and
(20:25):
Arabic words in circulation in medieval times, with um pond
or bon meaning box, and Martha or marza meaning um
candy or small or spice. So you had these words
like uh like like mota panas meaning small box or
Martha bond meaning spice box. Around the same time that
(20:48):
that that both Um, Germanic and Romance languages started calling
this particular almond confection marzipan or some very close variant
they're of in in whatever language they were speaking. UM,
and like, the more I read into it, the more
it made me think that like probably a product that
(21:10):
was being made across this whole multi linguistic area suddenly
popularized under the Italian based name for whatever reason. Not
not not sure, not sure, I don't know. I couldn't
tell you. UM. I can say that when um, When
English speakers Middle English speakers first started writing about marzipan,
(21:34):
circle of fourteen hundreds they called it march pain um,
based on like march and pain okay um p a
y any and they had already borrowed a couple of
French words, even though the word bread was also in
circulation at the time. Uh Middle English speakers had already
(21:54):
borrowed a couple of French words for dough or bread
to come up with words like paste and pastry and
pain um, all of which we're referencing these fancy Ish
Newish soft crusted pies or or other things made out
of dough. So anyway, I love it, I love it um.
(22:23):
A lot of these origin stories of marzipan do feature
similar elements um, one key one being famine, another being
scarcity um. The Toledo version credits the nuns of Convento
di San Clemente with the invention. According to legend, the
nuns used the only ingredients they had on hand, water, sugar,
(22:44):
and almond flour to create marzipan in order to stave
off a starvation during the Battaya de las Navez de
Tolusa of twelve twelve c um. And I feel like
that's a story we hear a lot of, like a battle.
It's understiege, scarcity what we eat. Yeah, yeah, which, to
(23:05):
be fair, I'm sure happened any number of times. Yep.
I mean on a much lesser scale. That's like me
during the pandemic of like, Okay, I have these five ingredients,
were we go, something's gonna happen and I'm gonna eat
it no matter what. Um. Okay. So I just want
(23:28):
to put in a note about this because I found
it really interesting. The traditional Easter holiday cake cassada, which
I have never heard of, but I understand people are
very passionate about it, is thought to have beginnings in
sicily Um, dating around the tenth century, though it is
much contested. Cassada, or at least one popular version of it,
(23:49):
is ringed with green marzapan decorated with candied fruits. According
to historian Clifford Right, cassada was so delicious and seductive
that is late as fIF teen seventy four, the Diocese
of Mazzarada Vallo had to prohibit its making at the
monastery during the Holy Week because the nuns preferred to
bake and eat it then pray, oh that's so good.
(24:16):
Also like Heckiah, those nuns get it. Ladies love it
so a different episode. It sounds super interesting, yea, but yeah,
I had to, I had to include that tidbit. It's beautiful. Yes.
So these European powers, particularly Spain and Italy, exported marzipan
(24:38):
to their colonies around the world, including regions in South
America and islands in Southeast Asia, where marzipan is still
popular today. Marzipan arrived in Norway in the eighteen hundreds,
or at least by the eighteen hundreds, and was popular
there by the nineteen hundreds. The Nita Egga Cafe was
founded in eighteen o six and not long after was
(24:59):
providing sweet to the rich and powerful. Due to the
ability to shape marzipan, it was a popular thing at
banquets um as almost a storytelling or symbolic food, which
makes sense. With the Industrial revolution and improvements and food
technologies and transportation, as well as inventions and improvements around
(25:22):
things like food dies and dust um made production and
shaping and coloring of marzipan. All of that made it easier.
J G. Nita Egga and Company were shipping about thirty
five tons up there four hundred marzipan products a day
by ninety nine, with a significant surgeon sales during the
holidays mhm in In an attempt to help control food
(25:48):
fraud and contamination in German marzipan. This group of German
researchers published an article about how they adapted the technology
used in crime scene DNA and analysis two genetically identify
marzipan contaminations with with stuff like ground apricot kernels at
(26:09):
the level of zero point one percent. Wow, that's so good.
It is a very serious paper that was published in
the American Chemical Society's one of their journals, and I
it makes me very happy. Now I want like a
(26:32):
c s I show when it's like c SI marzipan
see see s I could totally it could there could
totally be like a c s I food fraud Yes,
in fact, in fact, And now I don't know why
there hasn't been c s I call us. I think
we brought this up in past episodes too, so no
excuse zero. It's like you guys aren't even listening to
(26:56):
the show, which is unfathomable, in fact, unfathomable. Okay. So lastly,
I wanted to include this UM in the Colonial Williamsburg website,
which made me laugh very hard. UM posted a recipe
(27:19):
for a marzipan hedgehog, and it looks fantastic, I have
to say. Uh. They based it on a recipe from
Handed Glasses books The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy.
The recipe went like this. Take two pounds of blanched almonds.
Beat them well in a mortar with a little Canarian
orange flower water to keep them from oiling. Make them
(27:42):
into a stiff paste. Then beat in the yolks of
twelve eggs, leave out five of the whites. Put to
it a pint of cream, sweetened with sugar. Put in
a half pound of sweet butter melted. Set it on
a furnace or slow fire, and keep it constantly stirring
until it is stiff enough to be made in the
form of a hedgehog. Then stick it full of blanched almonds,
(28:02):
slit and suck up like the bristles of a hedgehog.
Then put it into a dish. Take a pint of
cream and the yolks of four eggs, beat up, sweetened
with sugar to your palate. Stir them together over a
slow fire until it is quite hot. Then pour it
around the hedgehog and a dish and let it stand
till this cold and serve it up, or a rich
(28:24):
gass foot jelly made clear and good poured into the
dish around the hedgehog. When it is cold. It looks
pretty and makes a neat dish, or it looks pretty
in the middle of a table for supper. This is amazing.
Literally everything about this is amazing. I love it. I
love it. Let's make a hedgehog. I just I love hedgehogs,
(28:48):
and I love marzipan, and I love old recipes. Yes,
and I love that. For some reason, this marzipan hedgehog
like necessarily needs to be like swimming in some kind
of bath of custard or jelly. Mm hmm. I love it.
(29:09):
I love it as well. It is excellent. Go look
at a picture of listeners. Do it? Do it right now?
I mean if you're driving or something, don't do it
right now, but like, like, as soon as you are
safely able to um. The image results range from very
adorable to a lot Shall we say yes? Uh, it
(29:35):
was well worth the Google image search. Yes, it is
chef's kiss Um. It does make a neat dish. Indeed,
it does, it does. I would welcome this on any
holiday table. Well, on that note, that is what we
(29:56):
have to say about Mars of Haan four. Now it
is um we we have some listener mail for you,
but first we've got one more quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
thank you, and we're back with It was like changing shapes,
(30:26):
and then I was like, suck the hedgehog. And then
I was thinking, Mars a pan the hedgehog. It needs
to be like the sad, clumsy sidekick of Sonic. All right,
we are We're we're dropping gold today, gold amazing ideas
(30:47):
into the universe. Come on, mm hmmm, okay, Chad wrote,
I was kind of surprised that you didn't know of
disco fries and wanted to write in and share. As
I was listen in to the Putine episode and mentally
drooling over the visions of gravy, duck, cheese and fries
running through my head, I kept thinking of my childhood
experiences with disco fries, which I considered the working class
(31:11):
are poor man's poutine? Well I do now. As a kid,
they were pure heaven. I could get them back then
I would order them whenever our family went to a
place like an a MW A locally owned d Q
or the Skating Rink. I never saw them on a
menu anywhere else, and it was a rare treat when
we dine at any of these places. Your episode briefly
transported me back to the memories of those fries covered
(31:34):
in gravy and tiny bits of well, who knows what
it was, probably smam. It's been a few decades since
I had some disco fries, and I had to smile
when you two debated what they were and did not
know about them. Thanks for listening. Such an emotional food
memory for me. On a relaxing Sunday, it was a
cooking day and I made a dish of tie yellow
curry with delicata squash, onions, cauliflower, and garlic, served with
(31:57):
Christmas Lama beans from Rancho Gordo, which is not the
same thing as disco fries, but it certainly hit the spot.
That does sound delicious. All of that sounds delicious. Oh goodness,
that's Skating Rink. I will tell you did not have
anything like that. You've got the nachos, but it was
just like chips that they put the sad cheese. Yeah
(32:20):
we cheese like in yeah scare quotes. Um, yeah, now
I'm trying to think. I I I know that we
had like now in laters and yeah, like sad nachos
at the skating rink, but I can't remember any other food.
I'm sure that there was other food I don't know,
(32:41):
but no regional little regional specialties like this. UM make
me so happy when like, yeah, you go like three
states over and people are like, what are you talking about?
But you're like, this is a key part of my childhood.
What do you mean? What am I talking about? So good? Yes, yes,
And we really appreciate your listeners letting us know about
(33:07):
Oh it's wonderful. Um. Florian wrote, Hello, fellow bacteria and
yeast poop enthusiasts. Uh baby ba ba bappy. There's an
acronym anyway, Lauren and Anti Ri SARONI, I just wanted
to share a fond Christmas memory with you, which resurfaced
(33:28):
while doing my favorite activity, sitting in an armchair knitting
socks while simultaneously enjoying a cup of hot cocao listening
to your podcast. It was some days before Christmas, about
twenty years ago. My friends and I were visiting a
comparatively small Christmas market in southern Germany. Um, you are
probably aware of the concept and the popularity of Central
European Christmas markets. They mostly consist of wooden booths selling
(33:53):
outrageously expensive crafts, um more mass produced sad trinkets than
you could ever roll your eyes at under the Christmas tree,
and most importantly so many wonderful foods and beverages. And
when they are not reasonably canceled due to COVID, they
are usually packed with people in the evening hours. Not
just packed, but crammed, stuffed, and compacted like clothing in
(34:15):
the suitcase of both equally prudent and indecisive person prior
to a long vacation to a place with an unpredictable climate.
A jeez, that's very personal, okay. Um. After about an
hour of being squeezed into an uneven block of young adults, Um,
we were desperate for a breather, while still unwilling to
(34:36):
forfeit our progress of at least looking at each booth.
Once our gaze fell about an area of almost complete
absence of any form of life, which radiated in a
circle from a single wooden hut, we assumed that this
was probably the outlet of some obnoxious cult and feeling bold,
we took our chances. After a few cautious strides, it
(34:57):
hit us we had ventured into the layer of a cheesemonger.
Even though my friends were more adventurous than me when
it came to fragrant cheeses, they shared my experience of
being totally overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the smell.
I dare not to guess which type of cheese might
have been the main contributor, but the sum of it
(35:17):
was as amazing as revolting. An unseen entity filled the place,
wafting out to us with its vaporous arms, pinching our
throats and noses until our skin turned pale and our
veins protruded blue, making us one of its own. I
believe it could have been weaponized or used as part
of a defensive system, a roke of force field. It
(35:40):
had to be smelled to be believed. We finally managed
to reinsert ourselves into the crowd and eventually managed to
buy a few bags of candied almonds, which we then
used as respirators for the rest of the day. This is,
of course, not to disrespect any fragrant cheese or the
people making and or enjoying it. But I have never
(36:01):
since seen a dense crowd being repelled like bacteria from
penicillium and a Petri dish. So I wanted to share
my experience with you, and of course my greatest respect
to the person running the cheese booth on that specific
Christmas market and people in similar circumstances. I hope that
there are always people braver than me, reaching beyond the
(36:23):
veil and reaping the treasure of their cheese ventures. Bravo.
Excellently written and read, Lauren. Oh that's so great. Thank you.
That is hilarious. It's hilarious. Everyone was like, oh, like, nope,
(36:48):
just like a crowd collective like mmmmm, wide birth. I
love that. Oh my goodness, how delightful, how delightful all around? Yes, absolutely,
and it's always such a delight to hear from you listeners.
Thank you so much for writing. We do appreciate it,
(37:09):
and if you would like to write to us, you
can our emails hello at savor pod dot com. We're
also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at savor pod, and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, you can visit the
i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super
(37:30):
producers Dylan Fagin and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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