Marvelous marshmallows

Last night I dreamed I ate a 10-pound marshmallow," the late Tommy Cooper used to tell his audiences. "And when I woke up, the pillow was gone."

The fez-wearing British comedian probably would not have fared very well on the marshmallow test, created by psychologists at Stanford University in the late 1960s and found to be a reliable predictor of academic success. The test gauges the extent to which children are able to delay gratification by noting whether, given a choice, they wolf down one marshmallow immediately or prefer to wait 15 minutes if promised an extra one.

Cooper, I suspect, would have been a wolfer. And so would I.

To me what candy historian Tim Richardson aptly calls the "fabulous gooiness" of marshmallows is irresistible (British celebrity chef Nigel Slater calls them the closest food there is to a kiss), especially this time of year.

Easter, after all, is the nation's second most important candy-eating occasion, right after Halloween and well ahead of Valentine's Day, and marshmallows are the most popular nonchocolate Easter candy. We eat them at other times of the year too, of course, like in the summertime when fully 50 percent of all marshmallows sold are toasted over a fire. Last May, as a matter of fact, some 20,000 toasted marshmallows were used to set a record for the largest s'more ever made.

At Easter, marshmallow treats come in a variety of forms, including marshmallow bunnies, marshmallow eggs, and, of course, marshmallow Peeps. But as good as these are they can't hold a candle to homemade. As Sarah Carter of the Los Angeles Times puts it, "Handmade marshmallows have as little to do with the supermarket variety as a snow cone does with sorbet." So what's a marshmallow aficionado to do but make his own? It's really not hard and certainly easier these days than when a major ingredient was the namesake Althaea officinalis, a variety of the mallow plant called the marsh mallow because it grows in and around marshes near the sea. The root produces a mucilaginous substance that from ancient times until the middle of the 19th century was the key to marshmallows. The ancient Egyptians were the first to use the sap to flavor and thicken a honey-based candy that was the precursor to the modern variety.

Those early marshmallows, however, were really more medicine than candy. They were prescribed for colds, coughs and sore throats. The gel from the marsh mallow plant has also been found to boost the immune system and, when applied as a poultice, to soothe cuts, scrapes and burns.

It was the French who first thought of capitalizing on the marsh mallow plant for culinary rather than pharmaceutical purposes. They whipped up egg whites and sugar and combined it with the sap from the mallow root to create a spongy candy called pâte de guimmauve, their name for marshmallow. In France marshmallows are still considered sweets sophisticated enough for adults. By the 20th century the mallow root was phased out, replaced by gelatin or imported gum.

Today, with modern ingredients, it's easy to create gourmet marshmallows like the ones that have been showing up lately on dessert plates in fashionable restaurants around the country. They're enough to make people think the Easter Bunny has been taking instruction at Le Cordon Bleu.

Listen to A Harte Appetite at 8:49 a.m. Fridays on KRCU 90.9 FM. Write A Harte Appetite, c/o the Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63702-0699 or by e-mail to tharte@semissourian.com.