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Dessert

Filling for Marshmallow Cake

A sweet, gelatinous filling made from gum arabic, powdered sugar, egg white, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Filling for Marshmallow Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the gum arabic in cold water.

  2. Stir in the powdered sugar and boil until a drop forms a soft ball in cold water.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg white in a bowl and strain the syrup into it while constantly beating.

  2. Flavor with vanilla and spread on the cake layers using a knife dipped in boiling water.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Gum arabic
Acts as a stabilizer that gives the filling a smooth, thick, marshmallow-like body.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the syrup to add sweetness and help set the filling's texture.
Egg white
Whipped with the hot syrup to trap air and create a light, airy foam.

The step that matters

Straining the syrup into the beaten egg white while beating constantly. Pouring the hot syrup in slowly while beating keeps it from scrambling the egg white and lets it cook into a stable, glossy foam. Stopping the beating can cause the foam to deflate and the filling to weep or go grainy.

“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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