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Marshmallow Sauce
¾ cup sugar
½ pound marshmallows
¼ cup milk
2 tablespoons water
Boil the sugar and milk until the sirup threads. When almost cold, beat until thick and white. Set in boiling water and stir until thin enough to pour. Stir the marshmallows with the water in a double boiler until smooth. Pour the sirup over the melted marshmallows and beat together. Keep warm, but not hot.
A two-part sauce: a fondant-like beaten syrup folded into melted marshmallow. The whole thing lives or dies on temperature control, since both components stiffen the moment they cool too far.
- "Until the sirup threads"That is the thread stage, 230-234F on a candy thermometer, when a drizzle from the spoon falls in a fine thread rather than in drops. With only ¼ cup milk to ¾ cup sugar this happens quickly, so watch it from the first boil.
- Beating when almost coldCooling the syrup before beating is what turns it thick and opaque white — you are seeding fine sugar crystals, the same trick used for fondant. Beaten while still hot, the syrup crystallises coarsely instead of creaming smooth.
- The hinge: keep everything warm, not hotReheat the beaten syrup over boiling water only until it pours, then combine. Direct heat is the thing to avoid: the milk sugars catch easily, and overheated marshmallow toughens.
- Half a pound of marshmallows8 ounces, which is roughly 4½ to 5 cups of miniature marshmallows or about 32 of the large modern ones. If the melted mixture resists smoothing, add a spoonful more water.
- Double boilerA heatproof bowl over an inch of barely simmering water does the same job. Do not let the bowl touch the water, and stir constantly so the marshmallow does not catch.
- Yield and servingSomething in the region of 1½ to 2 cups. Serve it warm over ice-cream; it stiffens as it cools, so hold it in the warm double boiler with the heat off until the moment of serving.
- StoringIt keeps several days covered in the refrigerator but turns solid. Bring it back over hot water with a teaspoon or two of water, never in the microwave, where it will inflate and then seize.
Marshmallow sauce belongs to the American soda-fountain vocabulary that household cookbooks of the period were domesticating for home cooks. The confection's name comes from the marsh mallow plant, Althaea officinalis, whose mucilaginous root was the original whipping and thickening agent in French pâte de guimauve; by the time this recipe was printed, gelatin and egg white had replaced the root, and the plant survived only in the name. The instruction to boil sugar to the thread stage and then beat it white comes straight out of the candy-maker's craft: a household that could make fondant could make this without a thermometer, judging the syrup by eye alone.