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Dessert

Marshmallow Paste

A sweet, spongy paste made from gum arabic, powdered sugar, egg whites, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Marshmallow Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gum

  1. Soak the gum arabic in 1 pint of water until soft.

Make the paste

  1. Add the powdered sugar and stir in a double boiler until thick and white.

  2. Test in water; if it forms a firm but not hard ball, it is done.

  3. Remove from heat and gradually add the beaten egg whites for a spongy texture.

  4. Flavor with orange flower or rose.

Set and finish

  1. Pour into a pan dusted with cornstarch and let cool.

  2. Cut into squares and pack in confectioners' sugar.

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. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + orangetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Gum arabic
Swells in water and gives the paste its body and chewy, elastic structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the paste and adds bulk so it thickens into a stable mass.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, giving the paste a light, spongy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten and added gradually off the heat. Adding them too hot or all at once can cook them into lumps and deflate the foam, so the paste loses its spongy texture.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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