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Dessert

Marshmallow Salad

A chilled salad of marshmallows, pineapple, pimientos, whipped cream, mayonnaise, and optional nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and nuts work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 162 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Marshmallow Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut marshmallows, pineapple, and pimientos into small pieces.

  2. Whip the cream until stiff.

Assemble and chill

  1. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.

  2. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

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.

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. Pineapple + nutstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Cream + pineappletop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Marshmallows
Soften and sweeten the salad, becoming chewy and tender as they sit in the cream.
Double cream
Whipped to stiffness to add light, airy body and moisture to the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and tang, binding the mixture and giving it a rich, creamy flavour.
Pineapple
Contributes juicy moisture and bright acidity that balances the sweetness of the marshmallows.

The step that matters

Whip the cream until stiff. Cream must be whipped enough to hold its shape; under-whipped cream stays runny and thins the salad, while over-whipping can turn it grainy and cause it to separate.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, pineapple):

  1. Macadamia nutfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, pineapple. 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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