Get a pound of shelled almonds and grind them thoroughly in a mortar. Then have a pound of melted sugar boiling in a casserole pot and put the almonds into it until they become a paste. Put it back into the mortar and grind it up again. When it has cooled, add in six egg whites and a beaker of milk made from melon seeds. Put all of that into a tourte pan lined with a sheet of dough as above. Bake it in an oven with its glazing of sugar and rosewater on it.
When you do not have time to grind the almonds, get some marzipan paste, and instead of the sheet of dough that is put under the tourte, get some wafers, having first greased the tourte pan with wax and then put moisted wafers on that.
from The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570) as translated by Terence Scully