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Dessert

Marshmallow Pudding

A chilled dessert made with marshmallows, whipped cream, sugar, nuts, cherries, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Marshmallow Pudding

Why it works: Nuts and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 638 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Marshmallow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut marshmallows into quarters.

  2. Whip the cream until stiff.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine whipped cream, sugar, chopped nuts, chopped cherries, and a splash of vanilla.

  2. Fold in the marshmallows gently.

  3. Chill the mixture before serving.

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. Nuts + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Cream + nutstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

Heavy cream
Whipped into stiff foam that gives the pudding its light, airy structure.
Marshmallows
Soften and partly melt into the cream, adding body and sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps it hold its whipped structure.

The step that matters

Whip the cream until stiff. Under-whipped cream stays runny and will not hold air, so the pudding turns out dense. Over-whipping can make cream grainy or split, so stop when peaks stand firm.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, vanilla. 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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