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Dessert

Marshmallow Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, and a marshmallow filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Marshmallow Cake

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Marshmallow Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the marshmallow mixture

  1. Boil sugar and 1 cup of water until it ropes well from a spoon.

  2. Break marshmallows into small pieces.

  3. Add the pieces to the boiling syrup and stir until they melt.

  4. Pour the melted mixture into the well-beaten egg whites and beat until smooth and cold.

Make and bake the cake

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the egg whites, milk, water, flour, and baking powder.

  3. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling and finish

  1. Cook 2 cups of white sugar and ½ cup of cold water until it begins to drop thick from the spoon.

  2. Mash the fresh marshmallows until dissolved.

  3. Pour the mixture into 3 beaten egg whites and mix well.

  4. Spread the filling on the cooled cake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake and marshmallow mixture a light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the creamed batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when cooked into syrup, sets the marshmallow-style filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.
Marshmallows
Melt into the syrup to give the mixture a soft, marshmallow-like texture and sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour the hot marshmallow mixture into the beaten egg whites while beating. Hot syrup poured slowly into beaten whites, with continuous beating, cooks the whites gently and keeps the foam smooth. Pouring too fast or letting the foam deflate causes lumps and a dense, weepy texture.

“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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