It is traditionally made by combining two parts of almond cream (crème d’amande) with one part pastry cream (crème pâtissière). Almond cream is made from butter, sugar, eggs, almond meal, bread flour, and rum; and pastry cream is made from whole milk, vanilla bean, cornstarch, sugar, egg yolks or whole eggs, and butter. There are many variations on both of these creams as well as on the proportion of almond cream to pastry cream in frangipane.[3][4]
On Epiphany, the French cut the king cake – a round cake made of frangipane layers – into slices to be distributed by a child known as le petit roi (the little king), who is usually hiding under the dining table. The cake is decorated with stars, a crown, flowers and a special bean hidden inside the cake. Whoever gets the piece of the frangipane cake with the bean is crowned "king" or "queen" for the following year.
Etymology
The word frangipane is a French term used to name products with an almond flavour.[5] The word comes ultimately from the last name of Marquis Muzio Frangipani or Cesare Frangipani.[2][6] The word first denoted the frangipani plant, from which was produced the perfume originally said to flavor frangipane.[7] Other sources say that the name as applied to the almond custard was an homage by 16th-century Parisian chefs in name only to Frangipani, who created a jasmine-based perfume with a smell like the flowers to perfume leather gloves.[2][8][9][10]
^Suas, Michel (2011). Advanced Bread and Pastry: A Professional Approach. Delmar, Cengage Learning.
^Jørgensen, Johannes (1913). Saint Francis of Assisi : a biography. University of Connecticut Libraries. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co. p. 257. "Illam autem comestionem vocant Romani mortariolum quae fit de amygdalis et zucario et de aliis rebus." Spec. (ed. Sab.) p. 221. Sabatier identifies this favourite food of Francis with the well-known stone-hard Roman mostaccioli (see Jorgensen's "Pilgrimsbogen," p. 61). On the other side f. Edouard d'Alencon: Frere Jacqueline, p. 19, n. 2; in mortariolum (in Old French mortairol) he sees rather "cette creme d'amandes bien connue aujourd'hui sous le nom de frangipane," a name in which he finds an allusion to Jacopa's name (her married name was Frangipani).
^"A pastry dough alternative: Frangipane". Newsday. Tribune Content Agency. 2013-07-22. the Marquis Muzio Frangipani. Frangipani wasn't a great cook. Rather, he popularized almond-scented gloves among the European aristocracy.
