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Dessert

Marshmallow Cream

A gelatin-based dessert made with egg whites, sugar, walnuts, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Marshmallow Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in ½ cup of boiling water.

  2. Once dissolved, fill the cup with cold water.

Make the marshmallow cream

  1. Pour the mixture slowly into the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Add sugar and lemon juice, then beat until it begins to set.

  3. Fold in the chopped walnuts and pour into a mold.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream.

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. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + walnuttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Powdered gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to give the cream its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps stabilise the egg white foam.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft cream.

The step that matters

Pour the gelatine mixture slowly into the egg whites. Gelatine begins to set as it cools, so pouring it in a thin, steady stream while beating keeps it evenly dispersed. Pouring too fast or letting it set in lumps can leave the cream uneven and dense.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon. 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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