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Dessert

Marshmallow Icing

A sweet icing made from sugar, vinegar, water, egg whites, and marshmallows.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Marshmallow Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil sugar, vinegar, and water until it forms a thread when dripped from a fork.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg whites.

  3. Add the quartered marshmallows and mix until well combined.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Vinegar + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Vinegar and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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

Sugar
Dissolves into the boiling syrup to provide sweetness and the body that sets the icing.
Egg whites
Trap air and thicken the mixture, giving the icing a light, fluffy structure.
Marshmallows
Add sweetness and a soft, sticky body that blends into the icing.
Vinegar
Adds a little acidity that helps keep the sugar smooth and the egg white foam stable.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to the thread stage. The sugar syrup must reach the thread stage before the egg whites go in. If it is undercooked, the icing stays runny; if overcooked, it turns hard and grainy as it cools.

“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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