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Dessert

Marshmallow Icing

A sweet frosting made from melted marshmallows, water, orange juice, and optional fruits and nuts, used to coat cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and nuts work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 280 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Marshmallow Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Combine marshmallow and water in a double boiler, stirring until melted.

  2. Add orange juice and chopped fruits and nuts, mixing well.

  3. Remove from heat and beat until cold.

Assemble

  1. Spread between cakes and ice the top with plain white icing.

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. Orange + nutstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Marshmallow
Melts into a sweet, glossy base that gives the frosting its body and stickiness.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and fruity flavour that cuts through the marshmallow sweetness.
Chopped fruits and nuts
Add texture and bite to the otherwise smooth frosting.

The step that matters

Remove from heat and beat until cold. Marshmallow sets as it cools, so beating while it cools lets it thicken into a spreadable frosting. Beating it while still hot would leave it too loose to hold its shape on the cake.

“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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