The Almond: Candy’s Most Versatile Ingredient

 

It’s impossible to discuss candy without bringing up the almond. The almond isn’t actually a nut - it’s a drupe, which is a type of fruit. Its cousins are other fruits such as the peach, cherry, apricot and plum. Regardless, people have been enjoying almonds for thousands of years – samples eaten in 10,000 BCE were found in the Franchthi Cave of Greece.

So valued is the almond tree that it’s been a symbol of sweetness and fragility since pre-history. In the Bible, Aaron’s rod blossomed and produced almonds, while the Roman’s threw almonds at weddings as a fertility charm. The symbol reflects the almond’s flowering cycle: the tree is the first to flower, which announces sweet beginnings, but is vulnerable to frost. The almond tree arrived in the U.S. with Spanish Franciscan Padres on the California coast in the mid-1700s. It wasn’t for a hundred years or so that the almond began to flourish

As for the candy: the almond was embedded in the age-old nougat, described by one tenth century text as being as soft and sweet as lips. It was also central to the almond-based marzipan, used in “subtleties,” where men, animals, trees, castles and other shapes were part of medieval feasts. Today they appear as fruits, flowers, and other shapes, with exuberant colors.

Two other almond-based candies are classics. One is the Jordan Almond, also known as the Italian “confetti” or the French “dragees.” These almonds were thrown in Roman weddings and are still served at American weddings today. The other candy is the Hershey Bar with almonds. It’s not exactly ancient, but it is old, dating back to the turn-of-the-century when Hershey created one of the first non-all-chocolate candy bars.