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Dessert

Marshmallow Pudding

A layered dessert of marshmallow, cream, ladyfingers soaked in sherry, topped with nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Marshmallow Pudding

Why it works: Cream and nuts work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 886 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Marshmallow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the marshmallow mixture

  1. Melt the marshmallows over hot water until soft.

  2. Add a little warm water and beat until smooth.

  3. Whip the cream until stiff peaks form.

Assemble and chill

  1. Dip the ladyfingers in the sherry and line a fruit dish with them.

  2. Layer whipped cream, then marshmallow mixture, and sprinkle with nuts.

  3. Repeat the layers until the dish is full.

  4. 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.

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. Cream + nutstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Sherry + nutstop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Marshmallows
Melt into a sweet, smooth base that sets the custard-like filling as it cools.
Heavy cream
Whipped to stiff peaks, it adds airy lightness and richness to the layers.
Ladyfingers
Soaked in sherry, they soften and form the structure that holds the layers together.
Sherry
Soaks into the ladyfingers, adding moisture and a distinctive aroma.

The step that matters

Whip the cream until stiff peaks form. Underwhipped cream stays runny and dilutes the marshmallow layers, while overwhipped cream turns grainy and loses its smooth texture. Stop once it holds firm peaks.

Swap the nuts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sherry. 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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