Marzipan
confection consisting primarily of sugar or honey and almond meal (ground almonds)
Marzipan is a confection consisting primarily of sugar and almond meal (ground almonds), sometimes augmented with almond oil or extract. Variants can be made from other nuts, or apricot or peach kernels, instead of almonds.
It is often made into sweets; common uses are chocolate-covered marzipan and small marzipan imitations of fruits and vegetables. It can also be used in biscuits or rolled into thin sheets and glazed for icing cakes, primarily birthday cakes, wedding cakes and Christmas cakes. Marzipan may also be used as a baking ingredient, as in stollen or banket. In some countries, it is shaped into small figures of animals as a traditional treat for New Year's Day or Christmas. Marzipan is used in some versions of king cake eaten during the Carnival season.
Around the world
Europe
The Geographical indications and traditional specialities in the European Union recognize two marzipans in Europe: one in Toledo (Spain) and one in Lübeck (Germany).
Southern Europe
In Spain, marzipan is a traditional Christmas dessert (mazapán), although in Toledo, where the first written reference to this product dates back to 1512, it is eaten all year round. In Italy, particularly in Palermo, marzipan (marzapane) is often shaped and painted with food colourings to resemble fruit—frutta martorana—especially during the Christmas season and on Il Giorno dei Morti (All Souls' Day) on November 2.
“Marzipan” enters the record as confection consisting primarily of sugar or honey and almond meal (ground almonds). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Marzipan, confection and consisting can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q106252. The Library of Congress control number is sh85081780. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1512.
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This entry incorporates text from “Marzipan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.