[HN Gopher] A Social History of Jell-O Salad (2023)
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A Social History of Jell-O Salad (2023)
Author : EndXA
Score : 41 points
Date : 2024-02-28 23:39 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.seriouseats.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.seriouseats.com)
| mdaniel wrote:
| My family [from Georgia] used this
| https://www.tastesoflizzyt.com/fluff-jello-salad/ and it was
| literally called "this" salad, as in "is she bringing 'this'?" I
| recall both green and red flavors, and I believe it had pineapple
| chunks in it. It was almost certainly made with Cool Whip, not
| cream cheese
|
| While I can recall the solid jello as pictured appearing at
| gatherings, the fluff version was by far the most common
| preparation of jello growing up
| dustincoates wrote:
| The Nebraska side of my family used to make "broken glass
| jello," which was essentially translucent Jello in an opaque
| gelatin.[0] (So gelatin in gelatin.)
|
| That and Dorothy Lynch salad dressing[1] and runzas[2] are what
| I most remember about our trips up north. With this kind of
| food, it's a surprise that my grandparents lived as long as
| they did, but it was good living.
|
| 0: https://bellyfull.net/broken-glass-jello/ 1:
| https://www.dorothylynch.com/products/home-style 2:
| https://houseofnasheats.com/runzas/
| cpach wrote:
| Runzas look awesome!
| Loughla wrote:
| Runzas are just Cornish pasties, i think. Unless I'm missing
| something?
| ksherlock wrote:
| Growing up a thousand miles north of Georgia, I can confirm
| that "Jello Salad" was a tub of cottage cheese, a tub of cool
| whip, a can of crushed pineapple, and a packet of red or green
| Jello.
| bluedino wrote:
| Ambrosia salad is very similar. Usually has coconut or
| marshmallows in there as well.
| davio wrote:
| In the early 90s, my High School served "Power Jello". The
| cafeteria workers told us they used orange juice instead of
| water.
| neilv wrote:
| That and other Jell-O salads were a main feature of our
| extended family get-together potlucks in rural farming Oregon.
| It might've been the most common dish to bring.
|
| The fluff was usually red, occasionally green, and sometimes
| layered with non-fluff Jell-O. Both forms would usually have
| fruit embedded in them, sparsely, and usually diced small.
|
| We never ate Jell-O at home (in the city, Portland), so I
| sometimes wondered whether Jell-O salads were a quirk of the
| Dutch-American farmers side of our family.
| mycologos wrote:
| Tangential, but Serious Eats is one of my favorite food websites
| on the internet. In an ocean of crappy SEO recipe blogs
| overstuffed with generic photos and unnecessary backstories,
| Serious Eats has a deep collection of well-explained and high-
| quality free recipes (and articles like this one).
|
| I would happily pay some kind of premium membership, but there
| doesn't appear to be such an option.
| jghn wrote:
| Unfortunately ever since it was sold the quality has gone way
| downhill. The main content producers are gone, and the SEO is
| on the rise. Recipes are getting modified and/or disappearing.
|
| It's still the case that I often start by searching "kenji
| DISH" or "gritzer DISH" but it's an artifact of the past. In
| terms of gonforeard content it is a dead site, and one where
| they seem to want to slowly undo the past
| mycologos wrote:
| That's disappointing. I saw it was sold recently, but I was
| hoping it was one of those sales where things mostly continue
| as usual.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| I like them and The Spruce. They're owned by the same company,
| now...
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Serious Eats is definitely declining in quality.
|
| I loved Kenji and BraveTart, but both of them have left the
| site. There is still a huge archive of good material, and there
| are contributors that I still like. Today, I mostly follow
| Kenji's YouTube channel, and I subscribe to America's Test
| Kitchen which has plenty of good recipes.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| I had no idea Kenji was no longer associated with Serious
| Eats. What a shame! Probably time to go archive my favorite
| articles and recipes.
|
| Kenji's YouTube channel is a great consolation prize, though
| - I just discovered it recently and it's become a fast
| favorite.
| Loughla wrote:
| America's Test Kitchen is better, in my opinion. Well worth the
| subscription cost.
| neom wrote:
| https://www.instagram.com/70sdinnerparty/ - Fantastic IG account.
| Pretty wild what people did/ate in the 70s - lots of weird jell-o
| stuff, heh. :)
| lucioperca wrote:
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BClze
| mauvehaus wrote:
| As a child of the '80's, it intrigues me that a cookbook from
| 1960 included a recipe for "Molded Avocado and Tuna". I don't
| recall avocados being popular until the late nineties or early
| aughts. At least not in southwestern Ohio.
|
| This raises the question: was there a previous period of avocado
| popularity, or was this one of those recipes included in a
| cookbook with unobtanium ingredients that no regular home cook
| ever makes?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| If you can't find metal stucco lath, use carbon fiber stucco
| lath!
| pfdietz wrote:
| I liked the recipe from an earlier time edition of Joy of
| Cooking that used turtle eggs that are now from a protected
| species. I never tried it, mind you.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| >was there a previous period of avocado popularity,
|
| I suspect it was regional, and as you observed, Ohio (and the
| Midwest in general) was not one of the regions 40+ years ago.
|
| At my (Midwestern) college radio station in the 1970s, we used
| to get PSAs (public service announcements) to read from the
| California Avocado Advisory Board[0,1] touting the fruit,
| sometimes they were mocked regarding what kind of advice we
| give to avocados.
|
| I recall my first direct experience with an avocado wasn't
| until I moved to California some years later.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Avocado_Commission#
| ...
|
| [1] at the above link, you can read about how a Sunset magazine
| cover featuring avocado dish played a role in popularizing
| avocado across the nation in the 1970s
| detourdog wrote:
| I was eating avocado, sprouts and Muenster cheese sandwiches
| since the early 70's. This was in Florida. Could be produce
| shipping made them more viable up north by the 90's.
| nytesky wrote:
| Florida Avocados I assume? Those things are massive but a
| little more bland than Hass.
|
| https://specialtyproduce.com/produce/Florida_Avocados_365.ph.
| ..
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| I recall a cookbook from the 1970's that lists such exotic
| delicacies as avocadoes, mangoes and chile peppers. From the
| presentation it was clear that these were possibly expensive,
| but one could find them, especially in large cities.
| gumby wrote:
| People would have known _about_ them at least as avocado was a
| popular interior decorating color in the late 60s and 70s.
|
| In general the food of that era was sweet and bland, so often
| recipes like this were just to give the reader a sense of
| excitement, rather than something likely to actually be made.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| I remember reading the book "The Man Who Saved Britain" [0] (a
| history of Bond novels & movies) and the author was describing
| some of the exotic foods, such as an avocado, being something
| the readers were unlikely to experience in a world of currency
| controls and import restrictions. One thing that pops up in
| that book is _why_ the package tour industry was invented and
| how it applied to _Goldfinger_.
|
| My suspicion is that some of those "exotics" appeared only in
| novels and the cookbook authors never expected their readers to
| ever be able to make the items.
|
| 0 - https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Saved-Britain-
| Disturbing/dp/0...
| o11c wrote:
| Avocados were definitely a known dessert treat back in 1970s
| Australia.
| nineplay wrote:
| I'm surprised the Jack Benny Show isn't mentioned. It was
| frequently the most popular radio show and it was sponsored by
| Jell-O from 1934 - 1942. During every episode ( at least every
| one that I've listened to) the announcer Don Wilson would do a
| commercial for Jell-O with a new salad recipe, usually the format
| was something like "What could be sadder than a spring bride who
| doesn't know what to make for desert? For tonight, try {cutesy
| salad name}." The recipe would follow. I remember in particular
| one that had Salmon and Lemon Jell-O.
|
| Jack and Mary's recipe book was published in 1937 chock full of
| Jell-O salad recipes. I have a copy here, it's delightful.
|
| This page has a more detailed history
|
| https://www.otrr.org/FILES/Articles/Danny_Goodwin_Articles/J...
|
| More pictures of the recipe book
|
| https://exhibitions.lib.udel.edu/jell-o/home/capturing-the-m....
| geon wrote:
| Would all those savory recpies use _sweet_ jello? Or was it a
| plain lemon flavored jello?
| nineplay wrote:
| Sweet sugery Jello. I don't think "Jell-O" made non-sweet
| versions at the time.
| bglazer wrote:
| Just curious, why do you listen to Jack Benny? Job?
| Hobby/personal interest?
| epiccoleman wrote:
| I just found this... abomination ... by searching "salmon lemon
| jello."
|
| https://cookpad.com/us/recipes/13792686-salmon-in-gelatin
|
| No thank you.
| OJFord wrote:
| I would say moulded foods in general have fallen out of fashion,
| Christmas pudding aside, and not counting things like cake tins &
| pie dishes as 'moulded foods'... which I suppose gets somewhat
| arbitrary, but there's definitely a certain hard to define (use
| of gelatin or similar setting agent?) style of moulding (blanc
| mange, jelly, pates) which seems out of vogue.
| dylan604 wrote:
| then why not just say moulded gelatin foods have fallen out of
| style? with all of the modern baking shows and baking adjacent
| game shows, moulding food is still all the rage.
|
| there's a lot of "food" that as fallen out of style as we've
| come to accept that it wasn't really food to begin with. the
| crap my parent and my grandparents were told was food was the
| the beginnings of the corp take over of food so that they were
| actually just food products. things like jello, margarine, cool
| whip, and similar are the top things that for me personally
| have been completely removed from my diet but were staples
| previously
| OJFord wrote:
| > then why not just say moulded gelatin foods have fallen out
| of style?
|
| Because that isn't what I said or meant but just a
| parenthetical suggestion at what a better definition _might_
| be when I realised that it worked for the three examples that
| came immediately to mind and that I listed?
|
| > with all of the modern baking shows and baking adjacent
| game shows
|
| I explicitly excepted cake tins and pie dishes and the like,
| _I_ don 't think of that as 'moulding' and I don't think most
| people do either.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| My mom made a labor-intensive dessert she called "broken window
| cake." It had small cubes of different flavors of Jello suspended
| in a sweet, whitish sponge cake-like substance. I loved it.
| bobchadwick wrote:
| I grew up Mormon in Utah and I don't recall seeing a savory
| Jell-O salad at any functions I ever attended.
|
| Sweet "salads," usually served as side dishes, are very common,
| though. My favorite, which doesn't actually include Jell-O, is my
| mom's frog-eye salad. It's made up of acini di pepe pasta,
| whipped cream (preferably Cool Whip), and pineapple chunks, mixed
| with a sauce of pineapple juice thickened with eggs and flour.
| Yum!
| detourdog wrote:
| That salad is beyond anything I have imagined.
| irrational wrote:
| > there wasn't much the food industry could do to repel a nation
| that was already stirring chopped tomatoes and pickles into
| strawberry Jell-O for a Red Crest Salad
|
| Oh no! Has anyone ever tasted this dish? Is it as disgusting as
| it sounds?
| philiplu wrote:
| Brings to mind James Lileks' "Gallery of Regrettable Food",
| https://lileks.com/institute/gallery/. I was born in 1960, so
| missed most of these delights - I suspect they mostly tailed off
| by the mid-60s. But, yeah, I remember some of the recipe cards my
| mom had from the 50s and early 60s were pretty frightening.
|
| Edit: and, of course, the Gallery is linked early in the article.
| Yes, I commented before reading. Sorry. It is worth a read!
| JoblessWonder wrote:
| My parents were the Romeo and Juliette of green jello salad,
| bringing together both the "cherried" and "non-cherried"
| varieties. Whenever all of my grandparents were together they
| would each present their varieties to the grandchildren as the
| best option. (Spoiler alert: They all grossed us out.)
| teslabox wrote:
| The amino acid profile of gelatin is much better than the profile
| of steak. Gelatin is an incomplete protein that has more of the
| simple anti-stress amino acids (glycine and proline mainly) than
| excitatory amino acids (tryptophan).
|
| Soup stock made from chicken carcasses or the beef knuckle bones
| will gel, like gelatin. The anti-stress aminos are why people
| have traditionally made soup to feed to sick family members.
|
| Great Lakes Gelatin makes good versions of gelatin and collagen
| protein powders: https://greatlakeswellness.com/products/beef-
| gelatin-single-...
|
| Last month I used the chat feature to ask about where the amino
| acid profiles had gone on their website. I was told they were
| switching the labeling/packaging from the former "supplement
| facts" to "nutrition facts". I presume this was motivated so
| people can buy this food product with food stamps (SNAP), but I
| didn't ask and they didn't volunteer.
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