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Dessert

Marshmallow Cream

A sweet, airy dessert made with gelatin, egg whites, sugar, flavoring, nuts, and optional coloring, chilled and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Gelatin and cream match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Marshmallow Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in ½ cup of cold water over low heat until smooth, then add the remaining ½ cup of cold water and let cool.

Make the marshmallow

  1. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until very light.

  2. Gradually add the dissolved gelatin to the egg whites while beating constantly.

  3. Sprinkle in the sugar while continuing to beat, then add the extract.

  4. Take one-third of the mixture and color it pink with food coloring.

Layer and chill

  1. Spread the pink mixture in a deep dish and sprinkle with pecan nuts.

  2. Add the second third of the mixture, sprinkle on more nuts, then top with the remaining mixture, decorating with dried cherries.

  3. Refrigerate until stiff, then serve with whipped cream or custard.

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. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Almond + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together486 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated gelatin
Sets the whipped mixture into a stiff, sliceable foam as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the cream its light, airy structure.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps stabilise the whipped foam.
Pecan nut meats
Add crunch and a nutty flavour between the layers.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dissolved gelatin to the egg whites while beating constantly. Gelatin added in a thin stream while beating spreads evenly through the foam. Pouring it in all at once or letting it set into lumps can deflate the whites and leave uneven texture.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Nutsfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, egg, sugar, meat, cream. 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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