Why is a marshmallow called a marshmallow?

Abbey
Food Under a Microscope
4 min readMay 18, 2019

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Along with the answers to other important questions like where did marshmallows come from and how are they made?

Is your favorite way to eat a marshmallow sitting next to a campfire making smores?

Maybe you enjoy the Easter season because it’s the only time of year that marshmallow Peeps can be found?

Marshmallows have somehow permeated the entire food sector topping everything from sweet potato casseroles to hot cocoa, but understand how this sweet treat rose in popularity, we need to go back to its roots literally.

The fluffy candy is very appropriately named after the mallow plant, which is native to salty marshes in Asia and Europe. The combination of the plant’s name and the environment in which it grows led to the term marshmallow.

The roots of the mallow plant can be squeezed to harvest a gooey sap. How someone figured that out, I don’t want to know.

This sap is the only part of the plant that’s incorporated into a marshmallow and there’s even that the ancient Egyptians used the mallow sap to make a candy with honey and nuts.

But back to marshmallows, it’s believed that the French introduced the type of marshmallow we are more familiar with today.

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Abbey
Food Under a Microscope

I’m a food scientist by PhD, a science writer, and a YouTuber. I’m fascinated by food science and enjoy writing and sharing what I’ve learn.