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Dessert

Chocolate Marshmallow Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, water, egg whites, marshmallows, milk, vanilla, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate 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.

Make the cake

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the flour, baking powder, and water; mix until smooth.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  5. Pour the batter into a large shallow pan and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, cook 1½ cups of sugar with ⅓ cup of milk for 10 minutes.

  2. Melt the marshmallows in a little water and add to the milk and sugar mixture.

  3. Beat until thick and flavor with vanilla.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once the filling has cooled on the cake, cover it with melted unsweetened chocolate.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture to the crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to lighten the batter and help the cake rise and set.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Marshmallows
Melted into the sugar mixture to give the filling its thick, soft, sticky body.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and filling and helps the butter cream to a light texture.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites in and fold gently. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg whites, which gives the batter its lift. Overmixing deflates the foam and produces a dense, heavy cake.

“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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