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Dessert

Fine Marshmallow

A confection made from gum, glucose, powdered sugar, egg whites, glycerine, and flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fine Marshmallow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gum

  1. Grind the gum.

  2. Place the ground gum in a copper pan with boiling water.

  3. Stir to prevent lumps.

  4. Set the pan in another pan of hot water.

  5. Heat while stirring until melted.

  6. Add glucose.

  7. Strain through a fine sieve into another pan.

  8. Add powdered sugar.

  9. Return to hot water.

  10. Stir until dissolved.

Whip and finish

  1. Separate the egg whites.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Remove the gum mixture from heat.

  4. Add the egg whites to the gum mixture.

  5. Beat until light and white.

  6. Add acetic acid and vanillin.

  7. Mix in glycerine.

  8. Stop beating immediately.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Arabian gum
Forms the stabilizing base that gives the marshmallow its elastic, chewy body.
Glucose
Adds sweetness and softness while helping keep the texture smooth and less grainy.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and bulk to the syrup mixture.
Fresh eggs (whites only)
Whipped into a foam that gives the marshmallow its light, airy structure.
Glycerine
Helps keep the marshmallow moist and soft.

The step that matters

Stop beating immediately. Overbeating a whipped egg white foam makes it dry and grainy and causes it to collapse, so the cook should stop as soon as the mixture is light and white.

“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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