Another one of the long recipes in Philippine Welser’s collection, this one is for marzipan.
235 If you want to make a good strong marzipan (martza ban)
Take shelled almonds, the best kind, 4 ounces, pine nuts that are fresh, wash them in hot rosewater and leave them lying until they are cold, 4 ounces, and the finest sugar, 1 half pound.
These three things must be pounded (gestosenn) each separately, and when they are pounded, grind (mals) them in a mortar. Rosewater should be added so the three abovementioned things are united with each other into a dough. Beforehand, you should put pounded cinnamon into the rosewater, as much or as little as anyone likes. But you must not add the rosewater to the abovementioned three materials at once, but a little at first and after it was all pounded with each other, you should pour in a little rosewater again and again and pound it more. You must continue doing this again and again until the abovementioned dough is ready for baking. Then you should take a proper tart pan and put in some of the abovementioned dough with wide wafers (albotten) underneath. Let one after the other bake properly until the dough is all used up (verbachenn). Afterwards, you can cut the same tarts into small square pieces or whatever shape your cutter (foram) has. Then they are right and good, not too small.
But if you only want to make half as much so that you can enjoy each one fresh when you do not use up a lot, for it is best and the healthiest food to enjoy them fresh, you must only use half the quantity of the abovementioned ingredients by weight, that is: shelled almonds 4 ounces, pine nuts 2 ounces, the finest sugar 1 fierdung
It is not unusual to find detailed recipes for making marzipan. It was a fashionable luxury in sixteenth-century Germany and occurs in many recipe books in many variations more or less economical. In its most elaborate form, it was served sculpted and gilded or painted, often shaped with artfully carved moulds such as the one illustrating this post. This recipe envisions a more quotidian use as a small bite, an individual serving to be enjoyed alone or in small company. However, it is not an economical recipe. Pine nuts were, if anything, even more luxurious than almonds in Germany. We find them used in marzipan variations by the courtly Marx Rumpolt, but they do not feature elsewhere and certainly not as a regular ingredient. This is an interesting idiosyncrasy.
The process of making marzipan is straightforward: almonds, and here pine nuts, are blanched and ground up to a fine paste, adding rosewater as needed. This is then mixed with sugar, spread on a wafer, and gently baked. Some recipes call for a glaze or a scattering of confits, but these are plain roundels intended to be cut up. That was probably the most common way of serving it, in small pieces. The concern for freshness and the relative smallness of each batch – the latter would produce a mere 200-300 grammes – indicates this was an exclusive pleasure.
Philippine Welser (1527-1580), a member of the prominent and extremely wealthy Welser banking family of Augsburg, was a famous beauty of her day. Scandalously, she secretly married Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg in 1557 and followed him first to Bohemia, then to Tyrol. A number of manuscripts are associated with her, most famously a collection of medicinal recipes and one of mainly culinary ones. The recipe collection, addressed as her Kochbuch in German, was most likely produced around 1550 when she was a young woman in Augsburg. It may have been made at the request of her mother and was written by an experienced scribe. Some later additions, though, are in Philippine Welser’s own hand, suggesting she used it.
The manuscript is currently held in the library of Ambras Castle near Innsbruck as PA 1473 and was edited by Gerold Hayer as Das Kochbuch der Philippine Welser (Innsbruck 1983).