Chocolate Marmites – A Geneva Exclusive

The Three-Legged Pots Are Filled With Marzipan Vegetables

Oct 28, 2009

Not to be confused with the UK yeast extract spread, Geneva 'marmites' are available only in December during annual Escalade celebrations - and they have a tale to tell.

Every year, leading up to the weekend closest to December 12, bakery and chocolate shop windows all over Geneva proudly display chocolate cauldrons, or marmites as they are known, filled with marzipan vegetables and decked with red and yellow ribbons, Geneva’s colors.

Families and businesses alike buy the cauldrons for a ritual that requires the youngest and the oldest member of any given group to smash the marmite open and then serve the chocolate shards and the brightly colored veggies to the others present.

Mère, or Mother, Royaume has become the iconic figure of the Escalade, which celebrates Geneva’s definitive defeat over neighboring Savoy. Savoy coveted the independent city state, and made attempts to conquer it. On the night of December 12, 1602, Savoy tried yet again with a strategy that involved soldiers sneaking up in the dead of night and raising ladders to the city ramparts hoping to get inside before the alarm could be raised.

Instead, they were discovered immediately, and although historians say Mère Royaume was by far not the only person to have reacted this way, it is she who has gone down in the history books as the heroine of the hour: she opened her window, and threw something heavy – it is said a marmite – down on invaders. Who, by the way, never tried invading again.

And Who Exactly Was Mère Royaume?

Due in part to her name, which sounds as if it might be part of a legend (royaume means kingdom or realm), many think Mère Royaume never actually existed. But the feisty wife and mother of 14, who was 60 years old at the time of the attempted invasion, did exist say historians Bernard Lescaze and Corinne Walker who are co-editors of a book called Journal du Temps de l’Escalade: Genève et le Monde en 1602.

‘’There is documentary evidence that Mère Royaume existed. She was from Lyon [France], and at the time women kept their maiden names so being married to Pierre Royaume, l’essayeur des monnaies [money engraver], she was known as Catherine Cheynel épouse [wife of] Royaume’’ – or more popularly, Mère Royaume.

‘’Actually, what Mère Royaume threw out the window was more likely to have been a lot heftier than a cauldron,’’ says Lescaze, who thinks it was probably a receptacle into which dirty water and the contents of chamber pots got dumped.

However, by the 18th century, the established version of events was that Mère Royaume had hurled a cauldron from her window. Over time this got fine-tuned to a cauldron full of vegetable soup and it is this that chocolatiers immortalized by creating – around 1880 – soup pots in chocolate and filling them with vegetable-shaped candy.

Geneva’s lavish Escalade celebrations featuring historical reenactments, a parade, and a bonfire in front of St. Peter’s Cathedral, takes place on December 11 to 13 this year. It is not to be confused with the Course de l’Escalade, a running marathon open to one and all that in 2009 takes place on December 5. The shops begin filling with marmites around the first of the month.

The copyright of the article Chocolate Marmites – A Geneva Exclusive in European Culinary Travel is owned by Gail Mangold-Vine. Permission to republish Chocolate Marmites – A Geneva Exclusive in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.