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Dessert

Marshmallow Cake

A cake made with egg whites, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, lemon extract, marshmallows, and a soft icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. In another bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  4. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  5. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites and flavor with lemon extract.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

  2. For the filling, beat the egg whites and gradually add sugar until soft peaks form.

  3. Spread a layer of the icing over the cooled cake, then top with marshmallows.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Egg whites
Beaten egg whites add lift and a light, airy structure to the cake.
Butter
Creaming butter with sugar adds fat and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sugar sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, tender texture.
Flour
Flour provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Baking powder releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Sweet milk
Milk adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whites. Stirring hard would deflate the foam, leaving a denser cake with less rise.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour. 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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