Why Did Jello Salad Go Out Of Style?

Proof

America's Test Kitchen

Society & Culture, Food, Arts

4.4 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ethereal, contained, and rife with ingredients like cottage cheese, whipped cream, and fruit. The Jello salad was a mainstay of many American households throughout the 1950s and the '60s. They were a feast for the eyes, with mixed results about whether they were a feast for the stomach. Still, housewives made them, until a shift happened that upended the way women--and men--thought about cooking. In the season eight premiere of Proof, producer Karen Given tells us about the rise and fall of Jello and gelatin. It’s a story that begins in the Middle Ages, features handsome door-to-door gelatin salesmen on horseback, and goes all the way to Julia Child. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Exactly 17 years ago, I moved from Southern California to Chicago.
0:10.6	Something felt different about the Midwest.
0:12.7	People didn't honk their horns as often.
0:15.2	They were friendly, actually.
0:17.5	They used words like expressway and malort, and if you accidentally bump into someone instead
0:23.6	of excuse me, you'd say, OPE, that's spelled OPE, OPE.
0:29.2	The most eye-opening thing about the Midwest was the food.
0:32.9	In Iowa, I had something called a loose meat sandwich that's a sloppy Joe without the
0:37.6	sauce.
0:38.6	At a place called Sali's Grill in Milwaukee, I ate a cheeseburger topped with a kid
0:43.1	you not, an ice-cream scoop full of fresh butter.
0:47.3	My cardiologist appreciates the business.
0:50.5	And when I met the woman who'd become my wife, she cooked me a Midwest culinary specialty.
0:55.4	Pork tenderloin breaded with crumbled saltine crackers fried in butter.
1:01.3	People tend to mock Midwestern food, but I've grown to admire it.
1:05.1	It's rich, comforting, and can be really delicious.
1:08.2	And one of the great expressions of Midwest culinary culture is the Jello Salad.
1:15.3	It's as much a salad as chicken salad is a salad.
1:19.6	Back in the day, every summer cookout and church potluck was guaranteed to feature
1:24.0	a Jello salad.
1:26.0	Sometimes it was fruit filled and topped with whipped cream.
1:29.2	Other times it was savory, stuffed with chicken and olives.
	...

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