Away with the join stools, remove the court cubbert, look to the plate. Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane …

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act I Scene V

Marchpane may be made after this manner. Boil and clarify by it self, so much Honey as you think meet; when it is cold; take to every pound of Honey the white of an Egg, and beat them together in a basin, till they be incorporate together, and wax white: and when you have boiled it again two or three walms upon a fire of coals, continually stirring it: then put to it such quantity of blanched Almonds or Nut-kernels stamped, as shall make it of a just consistency: and after a walm or two more, when it is well mixed, pour it out upon a Table, and make up your marchpane. Afterward you may ice it with Rose-water and sugar. This is good for the Consumption.

Charles Butler, The History of Bees (1654)

Now if anyone wishes to vent a little spite against me, or take a casual swipe at me, I can count on his bringing up my Lubeck origin and Lubeck marzipan. If some ill-wisher can think of nothing else, he invariably thinks of connecting me with comic marzipan and representing me as a marzipan baker. Such stuff goes by the name of literary satire. But it does not bother me … And I certainly do not feel in the least insulted about the marzipan. In the first place it is a very tasty confection, and in the second place it is anything but trivial; rather it is remarkable and, as I have said, mysterious. And if we examine this sweet more closely, this mixture of almonds, rosewater and sugar, the suspicion arises that it is originally oriental, a [Haremskonfekt] confection for the harem, and that in all probability the recipe for this barely digestible delicacy came to Lubeck from the Orient by way of Venice. And it turns out that those wits are not so wrong as they themselves think, that Death in Venice is really ‘marzipan’ although in a deeper sense than they ever meant it.

Thomas Mann, “Lubeck as a Way of Life and Thought”, a speech delivered in 1926 on the 700th anniversary of the founding of the city.

The Gesuiti’s pulpit is an elaborate confection swathed in the heavy folds of a voluminous brocade curtain. This white curtain decorated in a handsome green damask pattern is in fact made of marble; all of the walls of the church are covered with this same white and green imitation damask made of verde antico inlaid in slabs of white marble. The illusion is extraordinary.

Peter Lauritzen, Venice: A Thousand Years of Culture and Civilisation (1981)

I was born to make history not to write novels and if I guess correctly this is because I know. Invention is the enemy of history which knows only discoveries, and only that which exists can be discovered.

Clemens von Metternich, philosopher-King of the Hapsburg Empire

Only a man can be a true confectioner, on account a woman’s frame is unsuited to lifting great weights of Marzipan.

Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Romanoff (authenticity disputed)