{"id":1064,"date":"2025-01-17T16:30:30","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T23:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/2025\/01\/17\/marshmallows\/"},"modified":"2025-01-17T19:25:05","modified_gmt":"2025-01-18T02:25:05","slug":"marshmallows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/2025\/01\/17\/marshmallows\/","title":{"rendered":"Marshmallows"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Have you ever come across one of those words where you are not sure how to spell it? You spell it out, but it does not seem right. Autocorrect throws some weird shit at you and you accept, but then there is some other color line under it now. Something is amiss. Great. Now I must perform a google search on fucking marshmallows. So, I did. And I learned something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before I even finished typing in the word \u201cmarshmallow,\u201d the responses start auto populating on my screen. The first one of which was from WebMD and read \u201cMARSHMALLOW: Overview, Uses, Side Effects, Precautions…\u201d Um… NO. Not at all what I am looking for. The scrumptious candy should not be popping up on WebMB. I must have the wrong spelling. I keep scrolling down until I find the type of results I was looking for. Marshmallow. Marshmallow root. Marshmallow in Spanish. Marshmallow fluff. There it is. Wikipedia Marshmallow is a confectionary made from\u2026\u201d and that\u2019s all I needed. I had the correct spelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But wait. What was all that stuff about marshmallow root? And WebMB? This required further investigating. The rabbit hole had opened. Also from WebMD: \u201cMarshmallow is sometimes used to form a protective layer on the skin and lining of the digestive tract. It also contains chemicals that might decrease cough and fight infections. Don’t confuse marshmallow with the mallow (Malva sylvestris) flower and leaf.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holy shit. Do my s\u2019mores marshmallows have an origin story? Turns out, they do. Here is what I learned from Wikipedia. Check it out<\/a> if, like Paul Harvey, you want the rest of the story. My generic overview follows. The word marshmallow comes from the name of the mallow plant species Althaea officinalis. It grows in wetlands or marshes. Marshmallow. It appears the use of this plant for medicinal purposes goes back as far as ancient Egypt, 2000 BCE. The Egyptians would prepare this mallow root pulp  by boiling it with honey, straining, cooling and then using it for sore throats and healing wounds. My guess would to be to make it more palatable. But who knows their original line of thought. Certainly not this guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to to the mid 19th<\/sup> century and you\u2019ve got the French adding sugar, water, and egg whites to it and whipping it up into a fluffy candy called P\u00e2te de Guimauve. And that is the basic recipe still in use today with egg whites or gelatin used to hold the foamy structure of what you and I know as the lowly marshmallow. Minus the mallow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In summary, today\u2019s marshmallow is an ancient medicinal delivery system, minus the medicine. And now you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever come across one of those words where you are not sure how to spell it? You spell it out, but it does not seem right. Autocorrect throws some weird shit at you and you accept, but then there is some other color line under it now. Something is amiss. Great. Now I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[554],"tags":[556,557,558,555],"class_list":["post-1064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-facts","tag-egypt","tag-mallow","tag-marsh","tag-marshmallow"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/img_2541-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1064"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1067,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions\/1067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}