Forget walking a mile in someone else’s shoes! Our favorite way to relate to folks in the past is through the foods they were eating, which often come to us courtesy of vintage recipes. But sometimes, learning what people ate back in the day mainly serves to remind us just how different things are now, as Twitter user and contributing editor to The Atlantic, Lizzie O’Leary, discovered recently.
When O’Leary found a cookbook with the extremely specific title Atlanta Natives’ Favorite Recipes, which was published in 1975, the foods described within were too good — by which we mean weird — to keep to herself. O’Leary went to the same place we all head to when we have an urgent discovery we have to dish on: her 51.9K Twitter followers. Her main focus was the salads, which by today’s health-conscious standards play fast and loose with the concept. But there was one extremely strange ingredient binding them all together, and that ingredient is… gelatin!
And just in case you thought we’d left Coca-Cola salad in the ’70s, here’s one in the wild from December 2018:
Next up, this recipe dedicated to the Sunshine State combines the tropical flavors of lime, lemon, orange, and avocado with… cottage cheese and mayo?
And if you thought gelatin was just for dessert, this next entry will broaden your taste horizons in new, horrifying ways:
My grandmothers, both terrible cooks, were of the jello salad generation. They aren’t my favorite, but I will eat them under certain conditions and feel a little nostalgic. But, mayo + tomato soup + gelatin is a hard no. Looks like 🤮, tastes like 🤮
— Monster is gone (@RochelleJennin7) June 23, 2019
This wasn’t the only crime being committed against potatoes, by the way:
It would have looked vaguely, disturbingly like this:
Sounds like a recipe for digestive disaster.
This might be a generational thing:
I can hear my family talking about every one of these. My dad was particularly impressed once by a salad lemon gelatin, beef, and lettuce(?!). Me: if it has Jell-O in it, it’s not a salad. Him: pic.twitter.com/WWhiAjj0Xy
— Nicole Pittman (@ndpittman) June 23, 2019
Meanwhile, some people are practically connoisseurs:
There is a long, sacred tradition of jello & mayo based salads. 1 of my faves involves cottage cheese & red gelatin. Another involves tiny pasta & marshmallows. Then there's the 1 w/ carrots & celery... https://t.co/cwBtH6NAJy
— Dr Lucal (@BetsyLucalPhD) June 23, 2019
Well, gelatin pioneers Jell-O first wiggled their way into America’s kitchens in the early 1900s, when better-paid factory jobs were drawing away the people who would normally work as cooks, leaving middle class housewives to do more of the cooking themselves. (Apparently it never occurred to their husbands to help out.)
For the next 70 years, Jell-O sold themselves as an easy way to feed a family, the idea being that you can add anything to Jell-O and not only does it look cool while it’s suspended in weird half-liquid, half-solid matter, but it also tastes delicious. (That was the theory, anyway.)
Jell-O wasn’t the only ones bouncing up and down for gelatin salads — someone had to provide all that mayo:
It’s a 50s thing, my parents LOVE congealed salads. Every Thanksgiving & Christmas, my family has bing cherry salad. It’s cherry jello, canned Bing cherries, canned crushed pineapple, port wine, sugar, extra gelatin, & pecans. Served on iceberg lettuce with a dollop of mayonnaise
— MC (@cardiwithpearls) June 23, 2019
It’s fascinating to see just how well Jell-O’s marketing ploy worked, but we’ll be keeping our leafy salads separate from our plain old fruit Jell-O — no mayo, pineapple, or tuna allowed.
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