Hot Chocolate with Real Marshmallow Root Marshmallows

Hot chocolate with true marshmallow root  Spode 3886- English 1830's

If you humor me for a moment, gentle readers, your patience will be rewarded with a Hot Cognac Chocolate rocket to Nirvana, promise. You see, I have long had a mad notion to make marshmallows with marshmallow root, a process abandoned in the 19^th century because it was too much of a pain (there are sometimes reasons things are no longer done… duh!) Call me crazy, but I really wanted to know what they tasted like and nobody knew! I finally found a recipe on E-how. Not knowing the chemistry of marshmallow root sap or how much heat it could take… or what the heck gum tragacanth would do… I did just what my little E-How recipe told me to do. Silly me. Honestly, I Googled for pages and pages and couldn’t find another example.

Back in the 21^st century, Ezra Pound Cake gave a perfect recipe with step-by-step photos for modern homemade marshmallows that made it look so easy and gave me pause, since my recipe seemed to have some bits missing…still I pressed on. I mean these saps have a long history, who knows what alchemy they can produce?

None, zero, zip on the alchemy front. I got fluff for my efforts, marshmallow fluff. Gum tragecanth, like gelatin, did not behave when you dropped it into the mallow water… it became… lumps. Whip it how I might, my marshmallow had small, tapioca-like blobs in it. I am sure that was a big factor in it remaining fluff and not solidifying properly. It is very tasty and will be great on my hot-cognac-chocolate-of-the-gods but marshmallows it ain’t. Back to Google I went.

Marshmallows these days are made from a whipped mixture of corn syrup or sugar, gelatine, gum arabic and flavorings. In my old version marshmallows are made with the mucilaginous sap (think okra) from the roots of the Marsh Mallow plant (Althea officinalis), a plant which typically grows in salt marshes and on banks of large bodies of water.

According to Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen "the first marshmallow-like confection, called pâte de Guimauve, was made in France" from the juice of the marsh mallow.” Owners of small candy stores put the whipped sap from the mallow root into a candy mold. This time-consuming process was typically done by hand. Indeed, candy stores had a very hard time keeping up with the demand. Now, marshmallows are made by piping the fluffy mixture through long tubes and cutting its tubular shape into equal pieces.
Thank you Mr. McGee!!! Knowing about pâte de Guimauve was the key to the kingdom. From there I found old recipes. All of them had Gum Arabic instead of my very pricey gum tragacanth. One old recipe talked about river water and rennet apples… no use to me although Eleanor Parkinson’s 1844 Complete Confectioner did talk about adding the gum and mallow mixture to sugar “which has been previously clarified and boiled to the feather” and drying of the mixture till it thickens, none of them talked about soaking the gum before adding it or whipping air into the mixture as Ezra Pound Cake encouraged.

FYI you can get marshmallow root from Frontier or Starwest Botanicals and Gum Tragacanth from Kerekes.

After my first fluff-asco… I tried to correct what I felt had gone wrong the first time… and I got marshmallows…very soft marshmallows but marshmallows. Was it worth it???? There is a faint flavor you can’t quite put your finger on that’s a little musky/woodsy. The rosewater comes through brilliantly and the tiny bit of caramelization gives it a warm glow that corn syrup can’t really do properly. There is a delicacy to the confection that is missing in the new version entirely. If you can’t go to all that trouble… use EPC’s fabulous recipe and add rosewater for the chocolate… it’s that Rosewater Marshmallow that takes the Hot Chocolate from the extraordinary to the sublime.

Marshmallows with Marshmallow Root

¼ c dried marshmallow root

1/ ¾ c sugar (*I used whole foods organic cane which is light brown to begin with)

1 ¼ T gum tragacanth (or gum Arabic, although I read it is ½ as potent so use at your own risk…the original recipe didn’t offer different measurement for Arabic)

2 c water

2 egg whites, whipped

2 t rosewater or orange flower water to taste

Simmer the root in 1 ½ c water for about 20 minutes. Soak the gum in ½ cup water. Stir the gum vigorously and plop it in the blender then cover it and wait till the cooking root has made a slightly mucilaginous tea. Strain out the root liquid into the blender and blend the root liquid and the gum paste very thoroughly. Put this into a saucepan over a very low heat and stir. It will be rubbery and will soften a little. Add the sugar and whisk for a few minutes… I quit when the thermometer read 215. It may be able to take more heat but it was already going brownish *. I then whipped it for 2 minutes to get some air into it that lightened it considerably from light caramel to café au lait and finally added the egg whites, beating it a bit more to blend. I poured it out… well out may not be the right term…it gives you a fight and is unbelievable sticky. I tried to put it in a powder-sugared pan but piped it out instead on a powder-sugared plate ... they take a while to dry and are crunchy on the outside and melting on the inside when they are finished. Refrigerate... they are sticky until they dry.

*** in retrospect, I would whip the egg whites till a meringue is formed and add the hot liquid as you would making Italian meringue... I think the product would be be better!!!

Hot Chocolate with Cognac for One (Lucky Soul)

2 T sugar

½ C cream (warmed)

1 oz. chocolate

1 T cocoa powder

2 T Milk (or more if you want this less thick)

1 T strong espresso

2 T Cognac

Melt sugar to caramel. Slowly, add the warm cream and stir till blended. Add the chopped chocolate and stir till melted. Add the cocoa, blend, then the espresso, milk and cognac. This is a luxuriantly thick and rich hot chocolate for grown-ups. Pour it into a cup and top with the Home-made Marshmallow with Rosewater and enter chocolate Nirvana

For anyone who is as mad as I am… I enclose the recipe from Sanderson should you want to 

try a fully original recipe.

This section is from page 54 of  The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-cook and Baker,  by Eleanor Parkinson, 1844

Pastes Formed With Gum - Pate De Guimauve - Marsh-Mallow Paste

Gum Arabic three pounds, roots of fresh marsh-mallows eight ounces, one dozen of rennet apples, loaf sugar three pounds. Peel, core, and cut the apples in pieces. Cleanse the roots, and slice them lengthways in an oblique direction; add this to seven pints of water; soft or river water is the best when filtered; put it on the fire and boil for a quarter of an hour, or until reduced to six pints; pound and sift the gum through a hair sieve; strain the decoction into a pan with the gum; put it on a moderate fire, or into a bain-marie, stirring it until the gum is perfectly dissolved; then strain it through a coarse towel or tamis cloth, the ends being twisted by two persons; add it to the sugar, which has been previously clarified and boiled to the feather; dry it well over the fire, keeping it constantly stirred from the bottom. When it has acquired a thick consistence, take the whites of eighteen eggs, and whip them to a strong froth; add them to the paste, and dry until it does not stick to the hand when it is applied to it; add a little essence of neroli, or a large glassful of double orange-flower water, and evaporate again to the same consistence. Pour it on a marble slab well dusted with starch-powder, flatten it with the hand; the next day cut it into strips, powder each strip, and put them in boxes. Powder the bottom that they may not stick.