Light, fluffy marshmallows
Q:  How are marshmallows made-James M., Albuquerque, NM
A: With much air and these ingredients: sugar, water, corn syrup, gelatin, and vanilla if you're doing it at home. The big guys
use the same ingredients plus modified cornstarch, a food preservative, and blue coloring.
Right: [Clown-Gysin Brands] Marshmallow delights
Boil the sugar, corn syrup, and water together until it forms a 240-degree F, hot candy syrup.
Then beat the bejeebers out of the syrup with an electric mixer on high while slowly adding the gelatin. Beat for ten, maybe
fifteen minutes, until you've got THREE TIMES THE VOLUME. That's how marshmallows get so airy.
At home, spread the beaten, now-fluffy syrup into a shallow pan and, after it cools and firms up-cut it with a knife into little squares.
Back in 1948, marshmallow manufacturers sped up this process when Alex Doumak invented the "extrusion process" that manufacturers still use. They pipe
the fluffy mixture through a long tube and cut the tubular shape into equal-size bits: marshmallows.
Dust with confectioners sugar and eat. We, in the United States, chomp down 90 million pounds annually of the candy fluff.
Two-thousand years ago in Egypt, people first pounded the gummy root of a mallow plant into a medicinal syrup and ointment. Marshmallows weren't fluffy
then. French candy-store owners began making what we might call marshmallows in the mid 1800s. They, too, used the sappy mallow root, which they
sweetened and whipped into the airy substance we know.
By the late 1800s the demand grew so large that manufacturers streamlined their process by adding starch and creating marshmallows in molds. About the
same time, they substituted gelatin for the mallow-root gum.
So the name marshmallow is now a misnomer. But once marshmallow makers went to marshes to find mallow root-the critical ingredient.
(Answered by April Holladay, science correspondent, July 11, 2001)
Further Surfing:
Nabisco: Marshmallow history
Global Gourmet: Marshmallow recipe
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