Making Life Better—Through Marshmallows

By Eme Crawford
December 6, 2013

Eme Crawford advocates for a healthier and more fiscally responsible South Carolina through her work with Tell Them  where she’s the Manager of Social Media and Online Mobilization and through coordinating Soda City Farmers’ Market‘s social media.

The marshmallow always struck me as a post-World War II food invention.  The sturdy little cylinders sang out efficiency, modernity, a fake-ness that all processed foods have.

So when I saw the marshmallow making a comeback at the Soda City Farmers’ Market, I thought it a tongue-in-cheek, retro move—kind of like chefs who make a game of re-inventing low-brow, Southern childhood favorites into haute cuisine.

Wrong-o.

It turns out the marshmallow has historically been used for medicinal purposes.  That’s right—the marshmallow is a plant lauded by Hippocrates in the fourth century BC and used in numerous ancient cultures to treat inflammation, coughs, and — how shall I put this delicately — overactive libidos. 

But let’s not kid ourselves, the marshmallows of those days would not be recognized as the marshmallows of today.  Leave it to the French to make medicine into a delightful treat.  What we enjoy today came from the mid-nineteenth century—a combination of the marshmallow plant’s root juices, egg whites, sugar, and water, painstakingly poured into tiny molds.

You can find homemade marshmallows at the Soda City Farmers’ Market in the tunes of lavender (The Lavender Farm Shop, York, SC), Pumpkin Spice (Spotted Salamander), and Maple Bacon (also Spotted Salamander).

While I’m not quite ready to make my own marshmallows, I’m keen to following in the footsteps of Southern chefs and reinvent one of my favorite low-brow, Southern childhood favorite treats: my grandmother’s version of s’mores—a saltine cracker, smeared with peanut butter, fluffily anchored with four small marshmallows in each corner, then placed in oven to brown the tops.  That’s it.  (Apparently it’s a Southern grandmother thing.  My friend Martha said her grandmother did it too!)

My simple reinvention replaces the saltine cracker with a graham cracker and uses a maple bacon marshmallow.  Yes, you can add chocolate, but then that takes away the spirit of Southern grandmother, I think.

For those of you who have enjoyed the original grandmother s’more, prepare yourself.  Where store-bought marshmallows keep their shape and brown in the heat—like little toasted top hats—these homemade marshmallows succumb into a delicious, gooey mess.

Check out the Soda City Farmers’ Market on Saturdays, 9:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. on the 1500 block of Main Street to find the latest flavor of marshmallow.

 

This weekly food column is curated by Tracie Broom, who serves on the board at Slow Food Columbia(http://www.slowfoodcola.org), publishes The Yum Diary, and is a founding partner at Flock and Rally: Events + Communications for a Brave New South. Follow her at @theyumdiary on Twitter. 

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