The Historic Russian Recipe That Turns Apples into Marshmallows

It sounds very similar. I might try both the recipe as it is given and a slight variation to compare them. Variation would be peeling, dicing and steaming the apples instead of preparing them in the oven as that might be quicker. Preparing egg white foam and putting the blended apples into that also seems like something that might make preparation a bit quicker but I would have to try to find out. Maybe adding a tiny amount of lemon juice would make sense if the acid turns out to be super important. Beside that it seems like something that lends itself to experimentation. Maybe a pinch of cinnamon would go well with the apples? Very fine ground walnut and some honey instead of sugar might also work well but I guess that‘s a whole new recipe already. I’m looking forward to it.

This is what I thought too! I actually emailed the woman from whom that information was taken and this was her response:

"I used to be convinced that the word ‘pastila’ derived from the words you mention below, but the deeper I dug, the more I came to believe that its etymology is more likely the old Russian стьлати — to spread out, which is the root of the word ‘postel’ as well. The derivation has to do with the technique of spreading the fruit paste into sheets to dry, and it ultimately makes more sense to me than the expected connection to various words related to ‘pastilla.’ One of the problems with researching food is that most of the people who compiled dictionaries were not fluent in in the kitchen, so I don’t entirely trust Fasmer, for instance, who states that the connection to ‘postel’ is a folk etymology."