Marshes are zones of transition between the land on one side and the water on the other, be it ocean, lake, pond, river, or creek. Marshes are flat, low-lying, treeless* land covered mostly by fresh or salt water or a mix of the two. Whatever land is there is always soft and soggy. Thus, wet lands. Wetlands.
The world’s biggest marshland connects areas of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay, 75,000 square miles in all. That’s an area 250 times bigger than New York City, constantly fed by more than a thousand free-flowing rivers and streams.
A Closer Look at Where Marshmallows Come From
All marsh plants have soft stems and all are able to survive frequent drownings
Fish live in marshlands, and so do the waterfowl that eat them. The ones with the most success fishing are the ones with long legs and pointy bills. Cranes, herons, egrets, and flamingos, all wading birds. Quick, what is Florida’s State Bird? Flamingo is the obvious choice, think of all those postcards and front lawns. But it’s the mockingbird, also the state bird of Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. Reason enough to change right there. Plus, flamingos exist naturally only in Florida. And or course, the flamingo is the symbol of the Florida Lottery.
The first dozen sources I checked each reported the Florida House voted 112 to 1 to make the American Flamingo the new State Bird
Some news outlets report it’s awaiting the vote of the Florida Senate. Yahoo says the deal’s been done. MSN says time expired on this session without the Flamingo Bill (isn’t that great?) ever making it to a vote on the floor. Which well-known news outlet didn’t get it right? Make a note to not bother yourself with anything they have to say. News outlets, social sites, and sources many use for news put speed over accuracy. It’s worth more if you don’t mind trading your credibility in on sensationalism. As far as I can tell, things have been going that way for some time.
The Moses in the basket story said something about bulrushes down by the riverside
They’re the plants used for the making of papyrus. In the U.S., most people call them cattails. Other plants commonly found in marshes are floating lily pads, sawgrass, and mallows, green plants that store water and nutrients in a pleasant-tasting sap nearly as thick as gelatin
The mallow sap is called mucilage
If you’re old enough, you might have used mucilage when you graduated from the little kids’ white paste that always ended up in someone’s hair. You can see what mucilage looks like by cutting off a piece of an aloe vera plant and squeezing it. Okra is key part of every authentic gumbo. Some like okra breaded and fried, like those zucchini appetizers that were once on menus at certain chain restaurants.
Egyptians are said to have combined the mucilage from mallow plant roots with water and honey to make sweet cakes
As that story goes, only the pharaohs and gods were permitted to eat them. In other countries, the mallow plant was a food, a candy, and a medicine. And then some bakers whipped egg whites together with the mallow sap, creating a soft, gooey substance with enough air bubbles trapped inside to make the sticky mess light and fluffy, like aerosol shaving foam.
Marsh Mallow (althea officinalis) is one of many marsh plants
The substance called marshmallow – without the s at the end – is a soft and sticky white cream/creme/paste/spread/goop made from the sap of the marsh plant. It’s light, airy, stretchy, and sweet.
Along came Archibald Query
Query was the inventor of a product he called Marshmallow Fluff, a well-chosen name. He went door-to-door selling his sweet, shapeless, semi-solid, gluey white mass. Query sold it by the pound, spooning it out of large containers until the sugar rationing of World War One put him out of business. Archibald recouped some of his losses by selling his special-recipe fluffy marshmallow cream/creme business to two childhood pals. They were just home from World War One and ready to start a candy-making business together.
The brothers promoted their Marshmallow Fluff by sponsoring a radio program
The program was 15 minutes of entertainment provided by the Flufferettes,** seen above during one of their live radio programs. And then one day their advertising agency came up with the idea of inventing a sandwich with Marshmallow Fluff as a key ingredient. One of the radio audience’s favorite Flufferettes’ episodes featured a recipe for a peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff sandwich. All you had to do is spread their Marshmallow Fluff on one slice of bread and peanut butter on another. When the halves were merged, the easier-to-spread client’s product (the fluff) went on top and the harder-to-spread Jif or Skippy, it didn’t matter; the (pea)nut went on the bottom so the fluff could drip over it while escaping the sandwich.
The ad agency called it the Fluffernutter, promoted it heavily, and it’s still around 66 years later
The radio program did wonders for sales
The Flufferettes and their Marshmallow Fluff sandwich went viral. The company went from buying their sugar in hundred-pound bags to buying 5,000 gallons of liquid sugar they stored in stainless steel tanks.
And then came marshmallows, the portable marshmallow snack
It wasn’t until mid-twentieth-century that someone figured out how to shove marshmallow paste down a long tube and slice it into small chunks when it came out of the other end. It took some adjusting until the marshmallow paste was thick enough to keep its shape but not enough to change its light and airy texture.
Marshmallows are mostly sugar, corn syrup, air, and just the right amount of gelatin
They’re traditionally white and shaped like little cylinders or large dice, both with rounded corners. Today marshmallows will custom make any color and shape you like.
Many Americans associate marshmallows with Easter baskets filled with sugars
Raise your hand if you’ve ever eaten a Peep. How about Rice Krispies Treats, Moon Pies, marshmallow eggs, or a new cookie, “invented” by the National Biscuit Company in 1913? It would be another 14 years before the Girl Scouts’ some mores recipe.
Nabisco gave their new cookie the name Mallomar
Mallomars are marshmallow filling sitting on a soft graham cracker round encased in a chocolate shell. It wasn’t the first product made with those three ingredients or even the second. The Danes had already invented a similar cookie in the 1800s. They spoke Danish, so they called it the flødeboller. A similar cookie named the Whippet was made and sold in Canada in 1901. They spoke English up there, mostly.
Not many people outside of the U.S. and Canada know s’mores
They’re layers of marshmallow and chocolate sandwiched between two graham crackers. People squish it all together and stick their s’mores in the campfire until the three flavors fuse into a gooey, sticky mass.
I wrote an article about s’mores for BestReviews in October 2022 and it’s still in Nexstar Media’s rotation
The current title is Everything you need to make s’mores at your next bonfire. The stock 1,000-word article was written in service of promoting products that pay referral fees and sales commissions to BestReviews. Nearly all product review sites work this way.
The Girl Scout Handbook of 1927
One “recipe” for making this extra-sweet melted dessert sandwich/cookie was popularized when the Girl Scouts printed it in their Handbook. They said their melted marshmallow-chocolate bar-graham cracker snack was so good that you’d want some more. S’more. Oh, now I get it.
Here’s a copy of a copy of the recipe as printed in the 1927 Handbook.
Artificial Intelligence Search Agent (AISA)
A.I. means so many different things to different people. I specify my meaning by identifying I’m using Artificial Intelligence only as a Search Agent: AISA. I spend hours online tracking down leads nearly every day, much as a detective does. Search agents now pop up everywhere, willing to condense things for us. The results are wrong often enough to not be trusted. It’s foolish to think these Artificial Intelligence Search Agents are right all the time. I like to use AISAs (A-suz) sometimes to see what the corner cutters are up to.
For example
The first AISA I checked told me “S’mores made with marshmallow fluff are a delicious twist on the classic treat, using the creamy spread instead of traditional marshmallows.”
The familiar marshmallow shape wasn’t invented until well after the “some mores,” so the traditional treat was made with spreadable marshmallow fluff, not individual marshmallows.
Always look down below where your AISA is typing. It will say something like “Auto-generated based on listed sources. May contain inaccuracies.” Count it as a source, sure, but not your only source when it’s important for you get to the heart of the matter. And remember, it’s got a recency bias built in.
And now, the Fluffernutter
- A proposal was put forward to make the fluffernutter Massachusetts’ official state sandwich. Several AISAs said it was passed and made official. It did not pass.
- I was astounded to find that only 20 years ago, there were public schools in Massachusetts serving Fluffernutters in cafeteria lunches. Every day.
- Elvis Presley fans will tell you he invented the fluffernutter,*** which is a peanut butter and marshmallow filling sandwich on white bread. Elvis did not. A recipe for such a sandwich was published during World War One, long before Elvis Aron and Jesse Garon or even Vernon and Gladys.
—
* If a marsh has trees, it’s a swamp.
** My first source said the Flufferettes were dancers, but how much fun can one have listening to a dancer on the radio? So I poked around a bit backstage and found out (more plausibly) the Flufferettes were a troupe that performed live skits, told jokes, and played music.
*** That’s not true. What is true is that Elvis ate enough of his special custom sandwiches to weigh what many report to have been 350 pounds there at the end. I was living in Memphis when he died. The number from back channel sources within the hospital was 270 pounds.
Bonus
Somerville’s annual tribute to Marshmallow Fluff is a community tradition. The 2026 edition of What the Fluff?features fluff-themed games, cooking and eating contests, children’s activities, and live music. Don’t miss the marshmallow toss, fluff jousting, fluff bowling, fluff hairdos, and the fluff lickoff. No kidding.
