Watch It Wiggle: The Jell-O Story

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 August 2018

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s been described as the ultimate status symbol for the wealthy, as the perfect solution for dieters and the sick, and, confusingly, as a liquid trapped in a solid that somehow remains fluid. What could this magical substance be? In case you haven’t guessed, this episode, we’re talking about Jell-O! Or, to be more precise, jelly—not the seedless kind you spread on toast, but the kind that shimmers on your plate, wiggles and jiggles on your spoon, and melts in your mouth. Jelly’s story is as old as cooking itself—it is one that involves spectacular riches and dazzling displays, as well as California’s poet laureate and some very curious chemistry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, hi, I'm Sam Bonpas. We are in Bonpas and Pa. It's our studio.
0:05.2	Just in the main floor here beneath a golden ceiling, a model of iguanodon.
0:10.1	There's some giants, six-foot-high pink and turquoise crystals.
0:15.0	Nikki, I wasn't with you when you visited Bonpas and Pare.
0:18.2	What is an iguanodon and six-foot-high pink and turquoise crystals? Explain.
0:23.2	An iguanodon is, in fact, a dinosaur.
0:26.3	One of those long lizardy ones.
0:28.2	And this particular iguanodon was in South London at the workshop of food magicians,
0:33.4	Bonpas and Pare. They're famous for cooking steaks and volcanoes and flooding buildings with
0:39.3	punch so you can go boating and get pissed at the same time and for glow in the dark ice-cream
0:45.0	fireworks and all sorts of other fabulous food-related spectacles.
0:49.8	And their workshop is jam-packed with bits and pieces from Projects Past.
0:54.8	This is a champagne bubble fountain. It gives you a cascade of edible bubbles that
1:00.6	taste like champagne. It took us three years to work out how to make that.
1:04.2	Clearly time will spend. But Nikki, you aren't visiting Sam Pape's
1:07.6	because of his champagne bubbles, though they do sound delightful. You were there because
1:11.6	Sam and his business partner Harry Par are the world's first jelly mongers.
1:16.1	So jelly mongers, well, a jelly monger is made up word. And as in word, we made up to
1:20.9	describe what we do making jellies.
1:24.0	Whereas of course, what we do is make podcasts, specifically gastropod, the podcast that looks
1:29.5	at food through the lens of science and history. I'm Nikola Twilly and I'm Cynthia Graber.
1:33.9	And this episode we are all about something that I as an American would call Jell-O, not
	...

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