Are you really being duped when you buy marzipan or almond paste?

Around Sinterklaas, this is often a recurring question: all those marzipan sweets and all those pastries filled with almond paste – are they really made from almonds? After all, almonds are supposed to be the basis of marzipan and almond paste. Yet every year, reports circulate suggesting that you might be getting ripped off, and that you could be buying a pig in a poke from Sinterklaas…

Marzipan and almond paste are closely related, although you might not think so when you place a pink piglet next to a sliced almond pastry log. Marzipan is the form of almond paste that you can eat straight away, made into beautiful shapes and sometimes coloured. But you also often see pastries and biscuits filled with pastry paste, for which other ingredients may officially be used.

Cheap alternatives

Ground apricot kernels, for example, or ground legumes. The latter will probably be white beans, because black beans or kidney beans would give the paste a rather strange colour. And of course, all of this is much cheaper than using almonds. But does that mean you’re being swindled everywhere you look?

What to look for

Let’s not assume that. In a supermarket, you can always check the ingredients list, of course. Does it only list almonds, sugar (or a form of it), and another ingredient to make it liquid or moist? Then it’s clear. There may of course still be a whole range of other ingredients in it, but if you don’t come across ‘legumes’, ‘white beans’ or ‘apricot kernels’, you can assume they weren’t used as cheaper substitutes for almonds either. At a bakery, you could ask about it if they aren’t proudly advertising that they really use almond paste.

Getting to the heart of the matter

And this may reassure you too: Wageningen University & Research (WUR) conducted a short study involving different types of marzipan from various shops. Prices varied by as much as a factor of 10, but all seven samples examined using DNA analyses and advanced protein identification contained almonds, and no other nuts and/or white bean flour.

They also investigated the aroma of seventeen marzipan samples, and there were indeed differences. ‘The marzipan from local bakeries in particular stood out compared with that from chain stores,’ the university states. So off to the bakery, we say. Or else, of course, make your own almond paste with this incredibly easy recipe! Wishing you a wonderful Sinterklaas celebration in advance!

Also read:

• Here’s where to get the tastiest almond pastry log in the Netherlands
• Eat all your Sinterklaas sweets in one go
• It’s been researched: why you can’t keep your hands off kruidnoten