Skip to main content
Dessert

Marshmallow Cream

A gelatin-based dessert with layered white and colored portions, topped with whipped cream or custard and optional cherries or nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Marshmallow Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water until soft.

  2. Gradually pour boiling water over the gelatin to dissolve it.

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the eggs until stiff and sift the sugar into them.

  2. Beat in the dissolved gelatin and your chosen flavoring.

  3. Divide the mixture into two equal parts and color one part pink or chocolate.

Layer, set and serve

  1. In a deep round dish, layer the white mixture, then the colored mixture, and repeat.

  2. Allow the marshmallow cream to harden.

  3. Turn it out onto a pretty plate and garnish with whipped cream, custard, cherries, or nuts as desired.

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable, marshmallow-like structure as it cools.
Eggs
Beaten until stiff, they trap air to give the cream a light, airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and adds body to the beaten foam.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs until stiff before sifting in the sugar. Stiff beaten egg whites hold air bubbles that give the cream its light, airy texture. If the eggs are under-beaten or deflated, the foam will be dense and the set will be heavy.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, vanilla, chocolate, cream. 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

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipes