Sensory descriptor
Marzipan
A sweet almond note from benzaldehyde, produced when apple or pear pips are crushed during milling.
Also called Bitter almond, Almond.
- Aroma family
- Stone fruit
- Does it indicate a fault?
- No — a normal part of cider and perry aroma
What causes it
Apple and pear seeds contain the cyanogenic glycoside amygdalin. When the seed coat is broken, endogenous β-glucosidase hydrolyses it to benzaldehyde, glucose and hydrogen cyanide. Benzaldehyde is the smell of bitter almond and of marzipan, and it has a low enough threshold that a modest proportion of fractured pips is detectable in the finished drink. Hammer mills produce it far more readily than knife or scratter mills. The cyanide released is trivial at cider concentrations and is not a food safety concern at any realistic pip load; the aroma is the practical consequence.
Trace benzaldehyde is present in most milled-fruit ciders and reads as part of the apple-core note. Where it is strong enough to be identified independently as marzipan, the mill has fractured a substantial proportion of the seed.
What raises it
Processes that increase this character, or preserve it where it would otherwise be lost.
Milling
Reducing whole fruit to a pulp so that the press has cell walls it can drain, rather than intact apples it can only bruise.
Basket pressing
Small-batch pressing in a slatted vertical basket, where a ram or screw drives a follower down onto loose pomace and juice runs out between the staves.
Pomace conditioning
Letting milled pomace stand before it goes to the press so that it drains better, presses faster and gives more juice.
Where it is usually met
Fruit and styles this character is recorded in. A record here is where the descriptor is commonly found, not a claim that every example shows it.
About Marzipan
Marzipan is one of the few cider descriptors that points directly at a piece of equipment, which makes it unusually actionable. A producer who does not want it changes the mill or the mill setting.
It is also produced by a second and unrelated route in aged cider, where slow oxidation of certain phenolic precursors yields benzaldehyde without any pips involved, so its appearance in a long-matured cider should not automatically be attributed to milling.
Others in the stone fruit family
Peach, apricot, nectarine.
Apricot
A concentrated, faintly honeyed stone-fruit note from lactones at higher concentration, common in ice cider and sweet styles.
Peach
A soft, sweet stone-fruit aroma produced by γ- and δ-lactones formed during fermentation and maturation.
Dried apricot
Concentrated stone fruit with an oxidative edge, from lactones developing alongside acetaldehyde and phenolic oxidation.
Plum
Dark, soft stone-fruit weight from heavier ethyl esters combined with polymerised phenolics in matured cider.
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- How are apples milled for cider
- What is scrumpy — Scrumpy is an informal West Country word for strong, still, usually cloudy farmhouse cider. It has no legal definition, so it describes a style expectation rather than a guaranteed method.
- Can you make cider without a press — You can extract juice by freezing and thawing pulped fruit and straining it through a cloth bag, but yields are low and oxidation is heavy. Buying fresh preservative-free juice is the usual alternative at small scale.
- What is wild fermented cider
- What is pomace conditioning
Where to go next
- The sensory model — The thirteen structural dimensions and the twenty aroma families, in full.
- Compounds — The chemistry behind the words.
- Troubleshooting — When a perception turns out to be a problem, this is where it is diagnosed.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing
Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24
Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.
The New Cider Maker’s Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Craft Producers
Claude Jolicoeur, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013. ISBN 9781603584739 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against the Open Library union catalogue: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013, ISBN 9781603584739, one edition recorded. That establishes the citation points at a real book in a stated edition, which is what a citation needs and is all it establishes. No copy was opened and nothing is quoted from it. The book itself is in print and not digitised in any open collection; where CiderHQ needs a figure from this territory it uses an accessible research source instead and says so.
European Food Safety Authority scientific opinions
EFSA · regulator · retrieved 2026-08-24
Registered for the food-safety questions cider genuinely raises: patulin in juice from rotten fruit, sulphite sensitivity, and the toxicology behind additive limits.