frangipane

Pastry cream flavoured with ground almonds used in tarts and cakes. However who invented it and when is complicated. The first written record of the recipe (for atourte de Franchipane) only dates from 1651 by French food writer La Varenne, so you can pick the version you like.

Choose your Frangipani

The classic story is that frangipane came to France along with Catherine de' Medici, who brought along a Cesare Frangipani ('break the bread') of the noble Roman family as her private glove perfumer (perfumed gloves were a very big deal in the Renaissance). One version is that he invented the cream to match the scent of the gloves and gave it to Catherine as a present when she wed the future Henri II, aged 14, in 1533.

Another version says it was named after an earlier Frangipani, Italian botantist Mutio who is said to have visited the West Indies in 1493, and who said the island’s delicious smell, came from a shrub (Plumeria alba) that later took his name. The scent of the cream was similar, so took his name as well.

Or was it Mutio’s grandson, Pompéo Frangipani, marquis and marshal of the armies of Louis XIII, who developed frangipane perfume to hide the stink of his men’s leather gloves and shoes and gave his name to the cream?

Or was it an older Frangipani, Mauritius, a monk and pioneer of perfumery, who discovered that the essences of perfumes were soluble in spirits?

Or as the Franciscans say, the cream goes back to the 13th century and Jacqueline de Septisoles, the young widow of the Roman nobleman named Graziano de Frangipani. She became a friend and disciple of Francis of Assisi, who called her ‘Brother Jacqueline’ and is recorded in greatly enjoyed her ‘almond cakes’ whenever he was in Rome.