Substituting Marshmallows?

I see lots of recipes with FA marshmallow and I usually substitute with TFA. I know most of the FA flavours are very strong and need less than an equivalent from CAP or TFA. Just wondering if its the same with Marshmallow?

A couple recipes have noted you can sub with any MM but just curious what others do and what they have noticed.

TFA Marshmallow
Percentages in recipes
Average mixing quantity: 2.6% (Median: 2%)

FA Marshmallow
Percentages in recipes
Average mixing quantity: 1.7% (Median: 1.5%)

CAP Marshmallow
Percentages in recipes
Average mixing quantity: 2.3% (Median: 2%)

They are all fairly close it seems.

4 Likes

Any reason why you look at the % in recipe vs the % in single flavor?

I tend to think in single flavor, you are evaluating the relative strength of the flavor, where in a mix it could be anything from a teeny tiny accent to a dominant base, so it’s not as objective.

TPA Marshmallow - Average quantity: 6.5% (Median: 5.0%)
FA Marshmallow - Average quantity: 2.5% (Median: 2.7%)

Based on that I’d say FA Marshmallow is more than twice as strong as TPA Marshmallow, though for a sub I’d just say double the percentage of TPA MM when the recipe calls for FA MM.

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you think I’m under the wrong impression.

4 Likes

That’s a very good point you are making here. I usually look at average mixing percentages too, but you are right, it all depends on what you are aiming for.

3 Likes

I use the mixing % because it is pulling from more data and is more likely to be closer to accurate. Very few people actually put their preferred single flavor into their flavor notes, so there aren’t as many data points. If only two or three people have put in single %s and one puts in 10 and another puts in 1%, that is a huge margin and really skews the results.

4 Likes

ALL very good points! definitely need to consider all these aspects.

3 Likes

I love all the marshmallows, I always use 2-3% of any of them.

1 Like

…not to mention (but I will) that marshmallow is not a stand alone flavor and traditionally is used as a sweetener or booster, which makes the mixer % a bit more accurate BUT @zigz, you make a very solid point and I agree with you to a point. It all really depends on what flavor you are researching… booster vs a standalone.

I really don’t use the averages on ELR myself but to @JoJo’s point, I agree that stand alone %s do seem to be skewed a bit more than mixers. I think it to be some insane people on here that use, say, cactus @ 20% single flavor, throwing the averages all over the place… all in my opinion of course :slight_smile:

FlavourArt is more concentrated than any of TFA’s flavors too. I don’t have FA’s marsh but I have both TFA/FA’s whipped cream and where I use 2% with TFA’s, I use 1-1.5 FA’s…

I would imagine I would do the same with the marshmallows

3 Likes

@daath stop me if I’m totally off here…

The thing about the single flavor %s is they are NOT calculated based on what people actually use but on what they put in as their preferred single %. Whereas the mixing % are calculated based on the recipes that people make. I believe it takes into account all the recipes that use that flavor, including the private ones. So take something like Marshmallow TPA. It has 32 single flavor recommendations that range from 1-20%. But almost 28,000 recipes use it. Some of those are probably singles (and the range is 0-50%), but I’m more likely to trust an average that’s based on 28,000 than one that is based on 32 even if the 28K one has a bigger range. Those ‘off’ numbers are weighted less when you have more data points. Numbers game. And in the end, basing on mixing % is still a ratio. One flavor has an average mixing % of 5 and another of 2, obviously the one with 2 is more concentrated and can be calculated accordingly.

I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind or convince anyone of anything, I just wanted to point that out cuz it sounds like people are thinking the single %s are calculated from recipes that use the flavor as a single and, afaik, they’re not.

4 Likes

You can substitute for sure. As for percentage, yes you will need to use more if going from FA to tpa.

But many recipies, when adding sweetness by using 0.5% mm FA I would recommend starting at 1%. 2% may just take over if you are just trying to add sweetness.

The other thing to think About is why all these recipies use FA for marshmallow. Imo it’s at the top for flavorings in adding a bit of sweetness when compared to tpa cap ect. It may not be the best “mallow” but for sweetness it’s pretty darn good and worth it to add to your shopping list.

As of mallow and flavor sometimes I really like toasted mm tpa. For the toasted flavor.

1 Like

Either way that goes, still to my point of, there’s a lot of…adventurous…people out there! Whether they input their cactus at 20% in a recipe or put 20% down as their preferred single, it throws the average all over the place.
Whereas that same person may use cactus in a mix and use it at a more “normal” level, in junction with other flavors. This would make the average window a little tighter…if that makes any sense :slight_smile:

1 Like

I think you’re correct about where those numbers come from JoJo (tho @daath would know if there’s anything in the code to deal with outliers). It lists the number of single flavor recommendations (take FA MM, it’s 19 single single reccos vs 583 recipes!) So yeah, you do have to take the single flavor average with a huge grain of salt because sometimes you’ll have like only 3 data-points and the numbers are absurd like [min 3%, avg 8%, max 20%] and you’ll just be shaking your head thinking “really guys?” Very often, I’ll scroll thru the notes to see who listed what, and I’ll even ignore the average if someone I trust has listed something well outside the average.

But if you’ve considered that, and made sure you have a good size sample and there aren’t enough outliers skewing the result, I think “single flavor” is a more ideal measure of “how concentrated this flavor is” in theory anyway. In reality, I get why you prefer to use the one with the larger dataset. Either way is kinda winging it, so I don’t think there’s a right or wrong here, despite my preference. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

You’re not :slight_smile:

There isn’t - but with a large sample size the outliers don’t count much. And if in doubt you can compare the avg and the median :slight_smile: But typically the single flavor recommendations aren’t many, so I typically go by recipe %

4 Likes

I agree. In theory it’d probably be better to use the single % to gauge the strength of a flavor.

So everyone needs to make sure they put their preferred single %s in! :wink:

4 Likes

Some of those odd 18% numbers are right. It’s the double apex of flavor. Personally I won’t go for the double apex. But I do recall a post somewhere where someone reported a flavor as ok at 3% horrible/muted at 5-15% and back again at 16-18.

But really. What a waist of an FA or other high concentrate flavor to chase to second apex of flavor. Icky. But I wouldn’t know where to start mixing/layering other flavors into that.

2 Likes

On an unrelated (related) note, all my bullcityvapor.com 10 ml TFA bottles are labeled with a large FA, so there may be times people (OK, newbs) might simply be confused between what is FlavourArt (FA) and what is the The Flavor Apprentice (TFA) (repackaged 10ml) when listing items from their personal stash

Bo

3 Likes

Yeah. I took a sharpie to my first order from bcv to make sure I would randomly forget something was tfa vs FA.

1 Like

I have both TFA and FA marshmallow. FA is sweeter, IMO, and has more of an actual marshmallow taste to it. TFA’s works as well as a sweetener but I don’t get any taste from it, so useful if you don’t actually want that hint of marshmallow, ironically :smiley:

2 Likes

Thanks for the replies. Didn’t really think of using the flavor notes percentages since its only such a small amount that’s normally used. I do use the notes when trying new flavors or building new recipes. But like said, with all the fluctuations in amounts used it still makes it a guessing game. I’ll look over the percentages and then start looking at similar recipes to get an even better gauge of how much to use.

1 Like