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Dessert

Marshmallow Cake

A cake made with batter, marshmallows, and a sugar syrup 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together 1 ½ cups sugar and ½ cup butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add 1 cup milk, ½ cup cornstarch, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and 2 cups flour. Mix until smooth.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the whites of 6 eggs until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25‑30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine 1 ½ cups sugar with enough water to moisten and boil until it forms a string. Drop in 8 fresh marshmallows and let them dissolve.

  2. Pour the syrup over the stiffly beaten whites of 2 eggs and beat until stiff.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of 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. Flour + eggtop 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, creaming with sugar traps air for a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and give the cake its rise and structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, fine-textured crumb when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Marshmallows
Dissolve into the syrup, giving the filling its soft, light, sweet body.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the batter. Egg whites hold air only while stiff; overmixing or stirring vigorously knocks the air out, so the cake rises less and turns dense. Fold gently and quickly.

“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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