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Dessert

Marshmallow Cake

A layered cake made with sugar, butter, egg whites, sweet milk, flour, baking powder, marshmallows, and a sugar water filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Marshmallow Cake

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

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.

Prepare the cake

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the egg whites and beat until stiff.

  4. Stir in the sweet milk, flour, and baking powder until well combined.

  5. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil 2 cups of sugar and ½ cup of water until it begins to candy.

  2. Add the marshmallows and whip until completely dissolved.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites and mix until 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air in the batter so the cake rises light and tender.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat that gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake once the batter is baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise.
Marshmallows
Melt into the boiled syrup, giving the filling its soft, sticky, airy body.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar and water to candy stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set the filling properly. Underheated syrup stays runny, while overheated syrup turns hard and 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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