Notes toward a definition of hoof-based cuisine

August 25, 2015 10:17 AM

A Social History of Jell-O Salad: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon
posted by Chrysostom (53 comments total)

Like clothing fashions and many other things, it will rise again, damnit.
posted by Melismata at 10:20 AM on August 25, 2015

One of my aunts used to serve these things at family gatherings when I was a kid in the early '80s...my siblings and I called them "housebuilding Jell-O" because the consistency of the Jell-O was tougher (and less flavourful) than the regular stuff, and we all hated them.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:25 AM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I just decided that this year's holiday party is going to be "A very aspic Christmas".

PREPARE YOURSELVES
posted by backseatpilot at 10:35 AM on August 25, 2015 [25 favorites]

Pefection Salad is a wonderful book, as is the same author's Something from the Oven. I had already been interested in food science history after reading As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s for an art history class and learned about cake mix companies removing eggs from the cake mix boxes because adding eggs made home cooks feel like they were doing more. After this and after reading Perfection Salad I started collecting vintage food science magazines like Table Talk (that album has scans from the interior of several of those magazines) and also vying with other people who love vintage magazines to find the most heinous, most shudder-inducing, most unnatural forms of gelatin salad possible. In short, I love this stuff. Except for eating it.
posted by PussKillian at 10:38 AM on August 25, 2015 [14 favorites]

I love finding out about stuff that was highly prized primarily because it was a massive pain in the ass to make.

Other examples would be Napoleon III's aluminum plates, or the ubiquitous presence of cream of celery soup on turn-of-the-century high end restaurant menus (because it was such a nuisance to maintain properly moist soil through the length of the growing season).

Then suddenly it's available to everyone, and there's this massive boom until people realize, "Actually, now that we've tried it, it's really a bit shit, isn't it?" And it disappears forever.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:39 AM on August 25, 2015 [21 favorites]

The article is like a history of emotional labor by way of gelatin.
posted by Sophie1 at 10:44 AM on August 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

PussKillian, if you're ever in L.A., you'll have to stop in for a peek at my collection of midcentury cookbooks.
posted by Sophie1 at 10:46 AM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

A few days ago, I made a Twitter bot (still a work in progress) inspired by the kind of midcentury recipes that now seem weird. "Jellied," "Jell-O," and "aspic" are all in there, but now I'm thinking I need to throw in more gelatinous synonyms.
posted by Metroid Baby at 11:06 AM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

My late grandmother was known to make something called "Christmas salad" which is comprised of I believe lime jello, shredded carrots, shredded apples and red cabbage? Someone got nostalgic and decided to bring some to a family gathering. It was fine - very inoffensive, and probably a decent way to get five kids to eat some vegetables.
posted by SassHat at 11:26 AM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

When I was a kid in the seventies and early eighties, at least two Jell-O salads were present at all family gatherings. Mostly sweet, a few savory (if carrots in lime Jell-O could be considered savory). The apex for me was Strawberry Pretzel Salad; the nadir was grandma's attempt to incorporate black walnuts from the tree in her yard--a visual and textural match for the contents of a baby's diaper.
posted by bgrebs at 11:43 AM on August 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

One of the advantages to growing up Irish/Italian in New England (mom from Ireland, not familiar with American or Italian cuisine and dad from an ignorant family not familiar with anything beyond red sauce on Prince spaghetti) is that I've never, ever sat at a table or in a room where there was Jello salad or that green bean casserole everyone always talks about.

Don't get me wrong, I ate plenty of terrible food growing up, just not this.

I almost want to try it but I said the same thing about Frito Pie once and that didn't turn out so well.
posted by bondcliff at 11:46 AM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm surprised that an article on the history of such dishes didn't even mention aspic (as MetroidBaby did). Maybe that's more of a British word, but most upper-class menus of the turn of the century (that is, around 1900) even in America seemed to feature some sort of aspic: a dish depending on gelatin, but unsweetened, usually meaty. Think of it as a thickened cold summer soup; it's a little less disgusting in that light.
posted by kozad at 12:02 PM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

The holiday cranberry "salad" I grew up with was the one my mom grew up with, and it was from the WWII Presbyterian cookbook my grandma used during all the wartime rationing. It has lots of jelled and meatless recipes. Anyway, the cranberry "salad" is chopped cranberries, nuts, and canned pineapple suspended in any of the red-flavored jellos.

I tell you what: From my cold. dead. hands.

A few days ago, I made a Twitter bot (still a work in progress) inspired by the kind of midcentury recipes that now seem weird. "Jellied," "Jell-O," and "aspic" are all in there, but now I'm thinking I need to throw in more gelatinous synonyms.

A friend of the family used to regularly attend our holiday dinners. She was from Birmingham, Alabama, and had the accent to prove it. She referred to our cranberry "salad" the way she grew up hearing it -- "congealed salad."

So there's one to broaden your bot.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:03 PM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I tell you what: From my cold. dead. hands.

My aunt was famous for failed jello molds at holidays (always sweet ones). I don't know if she was doing it all from scratch instead of using instant jello? Or if she was just kind of hapless at letting it sit or folding in the ingredients properly? Whatever the reason, they always drooped or slumped or just sat in a kind of mass--never taking the shape of whatever fancy mold she used.

Then one year they failed so spectacularly that we drank them with straws, and I shall not hear of your "properly set" jello mold ever again. #JelloSmoothies4Life
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:09 PM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

NOW IS MY MOMENT

Frito Pie is -amazing-. It's the perfect mix of crunchy, savory and spicy, (with creamy if you're a cheese-or-sour cream type person, as I am)

But it's easy to screw up - the corn chips have to be the right size (normal sized, not enormo scoops or tiiiiny broken ones) and they can't be flavored. The chili has to be thick and meaty, because if it's watery and goopy, it'll make the chips soggy.
posted by FritoKAL at 12:24 PM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

then-beloved comedian Bill Cosby

yup
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:29 PM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

canned pineapple suspended in any of the red-flavored jellos.

If nothing else this thread served to sever my belief that pineapple and jello were never the twain to meet. TL/DR: canned pineapple is denatured by cooking. Pineapple bonus fact, only in English is it not called ananas.

I /swore/ I had a "molded" crab dip recipe in my collection but the closest I could come was molded cole slaw based on lemon jello. At some point I resolve to make all my grandmother's recipes, but this is kind of far down the list.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:30 PM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

The tuna hot dish remains with us and will never die though.

(My mother God Bless Her heart was the biggest fan of red jello and canned fruit cocktail "salad" as there ever lived. The thought of eating it makes me nauseous.)
posted by bukvich at 12:32 PM on August 25, 2015

We still have a cranberry Jell-O mold every year. Cranberry sauce and raspberry Jell-O combined, chilled in a ring mold, then cut in half and the middle filled with a mixture of cream cheese, a little bit of honey, and chopped walnuts. It's delicious, and not even slightly off-putting, even if we kids delighted in calling it, simply, "mold."
posted by xingcat at 12:45 PM on August 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

My mother's family had Midwestern roots, which were most evident one day a year - Thanksgiving. That's when all the classics of Midwestern cuisine would show up, despite no one quite knowing who actually enjoyed eating them or why we made them in the first place. It was just The Way Things Are. Green bean casserole made with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup and topped with French's French-Fried Onions? Check. Cloyingly sweet Princella yam and apple casserole with Jet-Puffed mini marshmallow topping? Check. Cranberry Jell-O salad? Check. I still remember wandering down to the kitchen late at night Thanksgiving eve to find my mother frantically grinding cranberries so that the salad could be left in the fridge to set overnight. I can also remember seeing the adults politely take spoonfuls of it the next day, but I can't remember seeing those spoonfuls going in to their mouths.

When my sister took over Thanksgiving cooking duties, she accepted the mandate to make the green bean casserole and the yams, but she emphatically nixed the cranberry Jell-O salad. No one except my mother complained. She was insistent that it just was not Thanksgiving without this weirdly pinkish molded concoction. (You will be relieved, as were we all, to know that she has learned to live without it.)
posted by Aster at 1:00 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh my god, xingcat, you are the only other person in the world I know of who does that recipe! That was basically my grandmother's famous "mold" (she called it that, too). Slight differences: we don't actually cut in in half, but make it in two stages; we use sour cream instead of cream cheese, and we don't use walnuts. We serve it every Thanksgiving and it's basically the most popular dish at the table.
posted by holborne at 1:03 PM on August 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

My mother's favorite jello mold recipe involves red jello, strawberries, bananas and sour cream.
posted by interplanetjanet at 1:04 PM on August 25, 2015

So jealous of you guys. Growing up in a pretentious foodie household, it was made clear to me early on that Jell-O was for losers. Thanksgiving was always, "ok, this year we're going to try an Indonesian rice dish!" When I visited places like museums where there was a cafeteria, I wanted the little Jell-O cup with Cool Whip on top, but was told "you don't want that." Cool Whip + Jell-O = AWESOME.
posted by sockerpup at 1:11 PM on August 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

When you combine 1950s American housewifery with Ashkenazi Jews, you end up with black cherry Jell-O with sour cream, which is the best thing.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:25 PM on August 25, 2015 [8 favorites]

If you're gonna talk Jello and mention Bill Cosby, you can't forget Jack Benny, dammit. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to catch the train for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cuuuuu---
posted by entropicamericana at 1:27 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

....Camonga.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:27 PM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I really enjoyed reading this article and feel much more informed about the history of Jello now! Here's one part I especially enjoyed:

After the war, corporations that had begun producing instant and processed food products to feed the troops were in no rush to slow production. They'd profited on war contracts and were eager to continue their prosperity by bringing new innovations onto the market. The problem was, the new processed substitutes couldn't be sold on taste alone, as Shapiro makes clear in her book Something from the Oven: They just weren't as good as the real thing. But American palates had been adjusting to industrial flavors for the entire twentieth century. Shapiro drily notes, "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."

posted by aniola at 1:37 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

A friend of the family used to regularly attend our holiday dinners. She was from Birmingham, Alabama, and had the accent to prove it. She referred to our cranberry "salad" the way she grew up hearing it -- "congealed salad."

I am also from Birmingham and "congealed salad" is 100% how I would refer to it as well. I recall at least green and pink versions at some family gatherings / church potlucks, though I don't know what flavors they represented.
posted by ndfine at 1:43 PM on August 25, 2015

When you combine 1950s American housewifery with Ashkenazi Jews, you end up with black cherry Jell-O with sour cream, which is the best thing.

My god, you're right -- it was black cherry Jell-O Grandmother used, not raspberry. Just like the Dr. Brown's soda!
posted by holborne at 1:44 PM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I recall at least green and pink versions at some family gatherings / church potlucks, though I don't know what flavors they represented.

With stuff like Jell-o, green and pink are the flavors.
posted by mudpuppie at 1:45 PM on August 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

Around the edges peppermints
Just swimming in peach custard,
With lovely little curlicues
Of lovely yellow mustard ..
If all this is too much for you,
Permit me to advise
More Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise!

(Lyrics, recording.)
posted by verstegan at 1:48 PM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Does anyone remember something called Seattle Soup, it was something my GRandmother served my mother and her sisters for the first dinner. My grandmother had aspirations to be more middle class than she was, and it was a stunting dish to mount evidence (as was the aspic every christmas, but I love and miss aspic)
posted by PinkMoose at 2:16 PM on August 25, 2015

:runs after everyone yelling, "Wait, I forgot the chicken mousse in Lemon Jello:

Another thing that's so interesting about the gelatin based savory thing is that it really lasted a long time. I used to think the 1930s was the decade with the obsession about daintiness, but it comes up before and after. One of the pages in a 1916 Table Talk advertises several rival gelatin brands all boasting that they're dainty and pure. This was just ten years after the Pure Food Act of 1906 so it was still very much on people's minds.
posted by PussKillian at 2:39 PM on August 25, 2015

my siblings and I called them "housebuilding Jell-O" because the consistency of the Jell-O was tougher

Surely, the rightful name for this is "the Jell-o Brick Road"?

(I have been to the Jell-o Museum in LeRoy, NY. Contributors can support the museum by buying a brick in the walkway up to the front door that is called this.)
posted by ilana at 2:45 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I call this sort of thing "nightmare salad". I am unanimous in this.
posted by biscotti at 3:36 PM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

One of my co-workers insists that he grew up on some tragic concoction of lime jello and mayonnaise. I have never felt so Jewy in my life as when I heard that (and threw up a little in my mouth).
posted by Sophie1 at 3:43 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm certain I've told this story before, but: so, we inherited, from my grandmother who lived all her life in south Georgia, a number of Church Lady Cookbooks. They all have a section for congealed salads. We have made a great many things from those cookbooks (my great-aunt Dot's amazing poundcake recipe is in there), but I look at the recipe for "Daughter-in-Law Salad" and shudder.
posted by darchildre at 3:43 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Perhaps one day we'll look back upon the Burrito Bowl with the same proportion of nostalgia and disgust.
posted by JoeZydeco at 4:14 PM on August 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

Anyway, the cranberry "salad" is chopped cranberries, nuts, and canned pineapple suspended in any of the red-flavored jellos.

My mom makes this every year for Thanksgiving. One year we forgot to bring it and there was almost a riot. When new people come to Thanksgiving, it's pressed on them with great enthusiasm. This is the only jello mold-type thing that has ever appeared in our kitchen, but it is so. goddamm. good.

Raspberry jello, cranberry sauce from a can, walnuts, crushed pineapple from a can. So good. The perfect foil to all the salty/savory stuff at Thanksgiving.
posted by lunasol at 4:44 PM on August 25, 2015

I remember when I was a kid, lots of Jewish families liked eating the gelled liquid from gefilte fish. I think it was called yokh, which is Yiddish for "soup", but it's surprisingly hard to find any mention of this via Google. Some families also made ptcha, from calves' feet. I can't recall the last time I saw either of these. I don't miss them, certainly, but I miss the idea of them.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:57 PM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I just love Sunshine Salad (carrot shreds, crushed pineapple, mandarin oranges, maraschino cherries, orange Jell-O; make a flower pattern with extra fruit in the bottom of a loaf pan) but the entire concept of gelatin (hooves! Hides! Gross!) weirds me out. Luckily, they make convenient agar and pectin packets now for the squeamish vegetarians like myself.

I'd really like to unmold a can of cranberry sauce and let it float in a clear, pink-tinged mold of other Jell-O, but that's too meta for Thanksgiving and nobody would eat it that way either.
posted by blnkfrnk at 5:24 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

PussKillian, if you're ever in L.A., you'll have to stop in for a peek at my collection of midcentury cookbooks.

I would drive to LA just for a glimpse -- that is not the way I cook, but I love the photographs especially.

When new people come to Thanksgiving, it's pressed on them with great enthusiasm.

This is why I have learned to be very, very cautious about accepting Thanksgiving invitations. Even people who cook and eat pleasant food every other day of the year have a tendency to bring out the most horrific mid-century and/or midwestern dishes on that day.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:07 PM on August 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

I remember when I was a kid, lots of Jewish families liked eating the gelled liquid from gefilte fish. I think it was called yokh, which is Yiddish for "soup", but it's surprisingly hard to find any mention of this via Google. Some families also made ptcha, from calves' feet. I can't recall the last time I saw either of these. I don't miss them, certainly, but I miss the idea of them.

We still do -- but in the absence of the older generation (only two left (B"H) in our family and they're in their nineties and tend not to concentrate very well at the shabbat table any more) we call it "sauce". It's great for diluting the chrain a little but makes collecting plates very messy. "Yokh" (so that's how you spell it -- I've been writing "Yowoch" on the containers I freeze!) is reserved for chicken soup in our family.

You tend not to see the Jell-O salads in Australia any more (I do recall some from when I was a kid in the 70s -- something made from avocado and shaped into a fish mould maybe?) and I was a bit shocked by the cranberry salad at my NY relatives' Rosh Hashana one year. Their's was made from red jelly, tinned pineapple, cranberries and mandarine segments (I think some orange too). For my palette, that recipe just screams "dessert" and it was very odd having it served with chicken. The chicken was also separated onto two plates -- one for white meat, one for dark.
posted by prettypretty at 11:00 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

For my palette, that recipe just screams "dessert" and it was very odd having it served with chicken.

I know! I thought cranberry sauce was going to be a sort of relish. I was quite surprised when I first had it at a Thanksgiving dinner in the USA: a sort of tangy compote, but served on the same plate as turkey. That just wasn't right. It was jelled, but it wasn't jelly, if you know what I mean.

I can barely remember the jelled main dishes of my childhood; they were reserved for buffets, not family dinners, and I don't think anyone ate them even then. You know you can buy frozen cranberries here in Melbourne now?
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:34 PM on August 25, 2015

My take was it was like a jazzed up cranberry sauce, like you'd put on the Christmas turkey, only, so much sweeter and with fresh fruit.

Haven't seen frozen cranberries in Melbourne (although after that scare a little while ago, I haven't really been buying the frozen fruits).

(btw, my cousin's grandmother used to make what you call "ptcha", but called it "galla" -- tasted like intense garlic jelly. She also made helzel and gribenes which were yuuuuuummmmm. She's never passed on her recipes, unfortunately. She likes to keep them secret for some reason so any time she's given me a recipe it's with a subtle mistake that makes the whole thing not work.)
posted by prettypretty at 11:56 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I just bought one of these from Tupperware. I can't wait to bust it out... maybe traumatize my kids with a back-to-school Jello surprise.
posted by candyland at 5:02 AM on August 26, 2015

I would drive to LA just for a glimpse -- that is not the way I cook, but I love the photographs especially.

Dip Flash, you are more than welcome. Let me know anytime you're in town.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:56 AM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Funny, I was just lamenting last night that my frustrating day would have been better with a serving of Watergate salad. IT IS TRUE.
posted by sonascope at 9:33 AM on August 26, 2015

Some families also made ptcha, from calves' feet. I can't recall the last time I saw either of these. I don't miss them, certainly, but I miss the idea of them.
My Gran loved this, and when she was old, I had to cook all her favorite dishes for her from scratch, otherwise she would go on a food-strike (no cans, no frozen foods, no maggi-cubes, no gelatine (obviously), and not even bagged salad or pre-cut vegs - she would sit in the kitchen and control). I was rather surprised that I actually enjoyed it, when made from her ancient recipe, whilst I had found it disgusting when I was younger, where we mostly were served some industry version.
The funny thing was, it became kind of a fashionable thing here, right at the same time, so I could find variations on blogs that she would read and approve of.

Jello salads are the greatest fun, but today I find the taste bland. However, this summer my sister-in-law and I began experimenting with jellies and I can tell you already that there will be jellies and aspics during the holidays in our family, and they will be pretty. Maybe not exactly edible, though..
posted by mumimor at 1:38 PM on August 26, 2015

Mid-Century Menus has been mentioned before on the blue, but worth noting here is her section of reconstructed jello recipes - recipe, photos and reviews for each one!
Back in 2012, she even ran a gelatin contest.
Speaking as a naive antipodean from the colonies who never met a jello mold in her life (tinned cocktail franks on the other hand...) my reading of Perfection Salad shifted dramatically (into technicolor nightmare mode) after I discovered this blog...
posted by tabubilgirl at 7:20 AM on August 27, 2015

[FamilyName Redacted] Wedding Salad

1 small package of lime jello
1 c. boiling water
Stir together until dissolved.

Add in:
1 c. drained crushed pineapple
1 c. mini marshmallows
3/4 c. Miracle Whip
1 c. diced cabbage (we just grate this on a box grater)

Fold in:
1 large tub of Cool Whip

---
Notes:
1. That's right, MIRACLE WHIP.
2. Don't make the mistake one of my fancy friends did and think a regular-sized tub of Cool Whip is 'large'. It is not. Large means LARGE.

This is our standard family jell-o salad and it's delicious. I know it sounds like that friends Thanksgiving episode when Rachel mis-read the directions and make a trifle that was half shepherd's pie but at least this doesn't have meat.
posted by marylynn at 8:57 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Custard, good. Jam, good. Meat, good!"
posted by Chrysostom at 9:14 AM on August 28, 2015

While we're giving out Jell-O recipes, here's my dad's birthday pie: Replace the cold water in a package of lime Jell-O with two cups (approximately) of vanilla ice cream, and mix thoroughly. When cooled to room temperature, but before chilling, add 1/2 a cup of either the tiny chocolate chips or shaved chocolate and stir throughout. Pour into a prepared graham cracker crust, and chill until firm. You can use any flavor of Jell-O, but lime works best and is traditional.
posted by blnkfrnk at 1:20 PM on August 28, 2015