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Dessert

Marshmallow Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, egg whites, milk, marshmallows, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Make the cake

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Sift the flour and baking powder together.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  4. Add the egg whites alternately with the milk and flour to the creamed mixture.

  5. Bake in two paper-lined jelly tins.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine the marshmallows and cream in a saucepan.

  2. Set the saucepan in boiling water and stir until dissolved.

Assemble

  1. Spread half of the marshmallow mixture between the two layers and the remainder on top.

  2. Flavor to taste.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff foam, they trap air that lightens the cake's texture.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a rich flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when creamed with butter, helps incorporate air.
Marshmallows
Melt into a sweet, soft filling that binds the layers together.

The step that matters

Add the egg whites alternately with the milk and flour. Folding gently in alternating additions keeps the air beaten into the egg whites. Overmixing deflates the foam, leaving a denser cake that rises less.

“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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