Skip to main content
Dessert

Marshmallow Cream

A whipped cream dessert flavored with marshmallows, gelatin, sugar, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and gelatin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Marshmallow Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the marshmallow base

  1. Dissolve gelatin in hot water and pour over marshmallows to dissolve them.

Assemble and set

  1. Whip the cream until soft peaks form.

  2. Combine whipped cream with sugar, walnuts, and the marshmallow mixture.

  3. Set aside to cool.

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. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Cream + walnuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Whipped to soft peaks, it forms the light, airy body of the dish.
Gelatin
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape as it cools.
Marshmallows
Add sweetness and body, dissolved into the hot gelatin mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the whipped cream.

The step that matters

Combining the marshmallow mixture with the whipped cream. Gelatin begins to set as it cools, so the marshmallow mixture should be well dissolved and fluid when folded in. If it cools too much first, it can form lumps and the cream may deflate or set unevenly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes