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Dessert

Dipped Marshmallows

A caramel sauce made from sugar, milk, butter, and caramel sugar for dipping marshmallows.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Dipped Marshmallows

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and milk.

  2. While boiling, gradually pour in caramel sugar.

  3. When nearly done, add butter and let cook until it forms a soft ball.

Finish and shape

  1. Remove from heat and beat the mixture until cool.

  2. Using a fork, dip marshmallows into the mixture and place them on oiled paper.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Sugar
Forms the sweet base that cooks into the syrup.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk solids that give the mixture a softer, creamier body.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the texture and rounds out the flavour.
Caramel sugar
Provides caramel flavour and colour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking to a soft ball. Sugar syrup changes texture as its water boils off and its concentration rises. Cooking to the soft-ball stage sets the right firmness; undercooking leaves the coating runny, while overcooking makes it hard and brittle.

“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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