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Dessert

Marshmallow Frosting

A sweet frosting made from marshmallows, sugar, egg white, vanilla, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Marshmallow Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the marshmallow base

  1. Combine marshmallows and 4 tablespoons of hot water in a double boiler, stirring until melted and smooth.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 cup of sugar and ⅓ cup of hot water in a saucepan without stirring until the syrup threads when dropped from a spoon.

Combine and finish

  1. Gradually pour the syrup into the beaten egg white while beating continuously.

  2. Slowly add the melted marshmallows and mix well.

  3. Flavor with vanilla extract and lemon juice, then beat until cool and thick enough to spread.

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

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

  2. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Marshmallows
Melt to give the frosting its soft, sweet, glossy body and stability.
Egg white
Whipped into a foam that gives the frosting lightness and volume.
Sugar
Cooked into a syrup that sets the frosting and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup into the egg white. The syrup must be at threading stage and poured slowly while the egg white is beaten continuously. Hot syrup added in a thin stream cooks the egg white gently into a stable foam; pouring too fast or stopping the beater can deflate it or leave streaks.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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