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Marshmallow Paste
¾ cup sugar 1/4 cup milk ¼ lb. marshmallows 2 tablespoons hot water ½ teaspoon vanilla Put sugar and milk in a saucepan, heat slowly to boilingpoint without stirring, and boil six minutes. Break marshmallows in pieces and melt in double boiler, add hot water, and cook until mixture is smooth, then add hot syrup gradually, stirring constantly. Beat until cool enough to spread, then add vanilla. This may be used for both filling and frosting.
A boiled-sugar syrup beaten into melted marshmallow gives a glossy, stretchy frosting that stays soft under a cake dome. The whole thing turns on the syrup being hot when it meets the marshmallow.
- QuantitiesThe sugar is three-quarters of a cup and the marshmallows a quarter pound, about 4 oz. The vanilla figure is garbled in this printing: it reads as either half a teaspoon or a teaspoon and a half.
- The marshmallows have changedPeriod marshmallows were made with gelatine or gum arabic and were denser than today's aerated ones. Modern bagged marshmallows melt faster and thinner, so watch the double boiler and pull them off as soon as they are smooth. Miniature marshmallows save the breaking-up step.
- Boil without stirringStirring a sugar-and-milk syrup on the way up encourages crystals and a grainy frosting. Wash any grains off the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush and leave it alone.
- Six minutes is approximateThat timing assumes a particular pan and burner. What you want is roughly the soft-ball stage, about 235F on a thermometer, which on a modern hob may come sooner or later than six minutes.
- Add the syrup hot and slowlyPoured in a thin stream while beating, the hot syrup cooks and loosens the marshmallow into a smooth paste. Dumped in at once, or added after it has cooled, it seizes into lumps.
- Beat to spreading temperatureKeep beating until the mixture is warm rather than hot and falls from the beater in a thick ribbon. Add the vanilla at that point, as the recipe directs, so less of the flavour is driven off by the heat.
- YieldThe recipe says it serves as both filling and frosting; the quantity suits a modest two-layer cake. It sets with a soft skin and stays tacky, so cover it loosely and cut with a wetted knife.
Marshmallow began as a medicinal paste made from the mucilaginous root of Althaea officinalis, the marsh mallow, and by the late nineteenth century the root had largely given way to gelatine or gum arabic whipped with sugar. Commercial marshmallows were available in American groceries by the turn of the century, which is why a cookery school book of this period can treat them as a store-bought ingredient rather than something to make. Frostings of this type, where a boiled syrup is beaten into something already soft, belong to the same family as seven-minute frosting and boiled icing, all of them ways to get a glossy finish without an oven-dried meringue.