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Dessert

Marshmallow Cake

A layered cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, milk, vanilla, and marshmallows.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Marshmallow Cake

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Marshmallow Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake

  1. Cream sugar and butter together.

  2. Add eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in flour, baking powder, milk, and vanilla until thoroughly combined.

  4. Pour batter into cake pans and bake until done.

Make the marshmallow filling

  1. Boil 1 cup sugar with a little water until stringy.

  2. Add marshmallows to boiling syrup and let them dissolve.

  3. Spread marshmallow filling between cake layers.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing tenderness and flavor to the crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, helping the batter bind and set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and become light.
Marshmallows
Melt into the boiling syrup to create a sweet, sticky, stringy filling.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar and water until stringy. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to form the sticky, stringy texture the filling depends on. Underboiling leaves it runny, while overboiling makes it hard and brittle once cooled.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, milk. 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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