December 18
Marchpane - Katherine Tollemache
Thank you to my dear friend Teri Fitzgerald for these recipes which she found while researching the Cromwell family. These recipes are from Katherine Tollemache (née Cromwell). Katherine was the daughter of Henry Cromwell, 2nd Baron Cromwell and Mary Paulet, and she lived from 1565 to 1620.
Here is her recipe for marchpane, which was an almond paste, like today's marzipan, which was moulded or sculpted to look like fruit, nuts, people and objects.
To make a marchpane, to ize it, to garnish it and guilde it according to art
Take a pounde of almondes and blanche them in sething water and let the water seede before you put them in. Sodenlye poor them oute againe soe soone as they will blanche. Then when they are blanched, take as much sugar as theywaye, beat it and serce it, then beate them in a marble morter or brasse yf it be very cleane, beate them with a wooden pestell, droping in now and then two or three droppes of rose water to keepe them from oyleinge, then strew in now and then a handfull of serced sugar. Doe this till you have brought it to a perfect paste, then roll it thin as broade as you will have it and cut it rownde by a dishe. Set an edg aboute it as aboute a tarte, then make your garnishinge with some of the same paste in the fashion of birds and beastes. Then sett your marchpane into an oven as hott as for manchett and when it is halfe baked and better, take it out againe and set it a coolinge whilest you beate a little of the white of an egg and rose water and serced sugar togither till it be almoste as thick as batter for pancakes, then spreed it uppon the marchpane, sett it into the oven againe and when the ize is risen somthinge hie, then take it oute and stick into it your garnishinge and long comfitts whilest it is hott. When it is colde, guilde it, soe strew little biskettes and carowayes upoon it and serve it in.
If you'd like to try your hand at making marchpane then you can use the modernised recipe at http://oakden.co.uk/marchpane-cake/
The recipe for marchpane is quoted in Fruitful Endeavours: The 16th Century Household Secrets of Catherine Tollemache at Helmingham Hall by Moira Coleman (2012), Phillimore &Co. Ltd.
Teri Fitzgerald had written several articles on the Cromwell family for us here at the Anne Boleyn Files, including Who Was Gregory Cromwell? – How Fiction Became History, and in 2016 she and Diarmaid MacCulloch published an article “Gregory Cromwell: Two Portrait Miniatures by Hans Holbein the Younger” in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History. She is currently researching the Cromwell family and also the work of Hans Holbein the Younger.
