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Dessert

Marshmallow Frosting

A sweet frosting made from marshmallows, milk, sugar, boiling water, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Marshmallow Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar syrup

  1. Heat the milk and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Boil for 6 minutes without stirring.

Melt the marshmallows

  1. In a double boiler, heat the marshmallows until very soft.

  2. Add the boiling water to the marshmallows and cook until smooth.

Finish and spread

  1. Beat in the hot sugar mixture until partly cool.

  2. Flavor with vanilla and spread between cakes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Marshmallows
Melt into a soft, smooth base that gives the frosting its body and sweet, sticky texture.
Sugar
Dissolves and boils into a syrup that sweetens and firms the frosting as it cools.
Milk
Dissolves the sugar into a syrup and adds softness and richness to the frosting.
Boiling water
Loosens the melted marshmallows so they become smooth and spreadable.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar mixture for 6 minutes without stirring. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set correctly. Stirring can trigger crystallization, which makes the frosting grainy, so the mixture is left undisturbed while it boils.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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