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Toasted Marshmallows
1 tablespoon granulated gelatine 1 cup boiling water 1 cup sugar Whites 3 eggs 1½ teaspoons vanilla
What survives here is the ingredient list for a gelatine-and-egg-white marshmallow of the kind Fannie Farmer's kitchen made in quantity; the working notes below cover the parts that translate awkwardly.
- The gelatineOne tablespoon of granulated gelatine is close to one modern envelope (about 1/4 oz, 7 g), if slightly more than one; a full envelope is a reasonable substitution.
- Cup measuresA cup of granulated sugar is about 7 oz (200 g). No method survives with the list, but the cup of boiling water most likely serves to dissolve the gelatine and sugar into a syrup rather than as a separate soaking liquid.
- Egg whitesWhites of three eggs come to roughly 90 ml (3 fl oz). Because the whites are never cooked to a measured temperature in this style of confection, use pasteurized whites if the marshmallows will be eaten by anyone vulnerable.
- The hingeEverything depends on beating the gelatine syrup and whites long past the point where it looks done, until the mass holds a distinct ribbon and no longer flows back on itself. Underbeaten, it sets into a rubbery jelly rather than a foam.
- SettingPour into a shallow pan heavily dusted with equal parts cornstarch and confectioners' sugar, let stand uncovered several hours or overnight, then cut with an oiled knife and roll the cut faces in more of the same dust.
- ToastingThe title refers to browning the finished squares on a long fork over coals, or under a broiler about 4 inches from the element for well under a minute. Homemade marshmallows tend to brown and slump quickly, so watch them closely.
- YieldThis quantity fills an 8-inch square pan to a depth of roughly an inch and gives about three dozen pieces.
Marshmallow began as a medicine rather than a sweet: the mucilage of the marsh mallow root, Althaea officinalis, was boiled with sugar into lozenges for sore throats, and French confectioners' pâte de guimauve kept the name after gelatine and whipped egg white replaced the root. By the time the Boston Cooking School was teaching, the root was long gone from the formula and marshmallows were a domestic candy made from three cheap staples: gelatine, sugar and eggs. Toasting them over a fire seems to have been a casual amusement of the same era, which some three decades later would produce the campfire s'more, whose first printed recipe appears in the 1927 Girl Scout handbook.