Speaker 1: You guys know, I think cookbooks and menus are a
Speaker 1: form of literature. Read a lot of these ridiculous historians
Speaker 1: Max Noll and I they called me Ben. We had
Speaker 1: a we had a moment in January of twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: where we got super into.
Speaker 2: Gelatin Into is maybe a strong way of putting it.
Speaker 2: I think jello on its own is a delightful treat.
Speaker 2: It's locale, it's squishy, and it goes down easy if
Speaker 2: you have a sore throat. Great for hospital days. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of line personally. I don't know
Speaker 2: what you guys's favorite jello flavors are.
Speaker 1: I can't believe we used to be friends.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm sorry, I just I'm a little basically blue,
Speaker 2: well blue, what is blue?
Speaker 1: Jealous flavor? Blue? Yeah, we have a blue drink. We
Speaker 1: have an episode on artificial flavoring coming up in the future,
Speaker 1: in the future of ridiculous history. And gelatine itself is
Speaker 1: an amazing technology. I mean, it's it's ancient, but it's
Speaker 1: also I don't know, it's still so fascinating. It's so fun.
Speaker 1: I'm a person who plays with my food. I love
Speaker 1: that stuff.
Speaker 2: Remember Jello jigglers guy, Yeah, itello that you'd cut out
Speaker 2: with cookie cutters, and oh man, there was a golden
Speaker 2: time when Bill Cosby before we knew too much about that.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, he was the guy and he was the jigglers.
Speaker 2: All that stuff didn't age very well now that we know. Uh.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing. Jello in that form and it's
Speaker 2: purest form, the little bit of food coloring and some
Speaker 2: sweetener and you know whatever artificial flavoring a delight. Well,
Speaker 2: you start mixing in mayonnaise and olives and pickles and
Speaker 2: celery and shoot of slivers of meat, oh geez, or
Speaker 2: the earlier versions of it with things called aspects, which
Speaker 2: would be a gelatine kind of with meat chunks, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of suspended there. It really it becomes pretty cursed.
Speaker 2: There's an actually what I was looking for and talk
Speaker 2: was this guy has a channel called I Spy Antiques.
Speaker 2: He does a video where he tries to make a
Speaker 2: jello salad that he found in his grandmother's recipe book
Speaker 2: and he makes it in like a lamb cake mold
Speaker 2: and it ends up being this just cursed green, weird lumpy.
Speaker 2: It's got like green peppers in it. He takes a
Speaker 2: bite and it's just like he he curses God.
Speaker 1: Essentially, I never understood it, and that's what that's what
Speaker 1: comes to the forefront in today's classic episode. If you
Speaker 1: like us, are alive in twenty twenty four and you're
Speaker 1: wondering why why did gelatine become such a thing. Nowadays
Speaker 1: it's relegated to the world the desserts. But once upon
Speaker 1: a time, folks, as we will learn together today, gelatine
Speaker 1: was considered like a savory medium, a savory path for
Speaker 1: a main dish. And it's just it's it's a centerpiece.
Speaker 1: Dare we say, you know, we say, yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a It's a cavalcade of culinary catastrophe. Anyway, here it
Speaker 1: is ridiculous History. Is a production of iHeartRadio, America's most
Speaker 1: famous dessert. There's always room for Jel. Hello, my name
Speaker 1: is Ben. I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's gonna take me a minute to wrap my
Speaker 2: head around. It's not worth it, No, it is worth it.
Speaker 2: You you you kind of just broke my brain. But
Speaker 2: I guess I'm Noel and I think this is ridiculous history.
Speaker 2: And today we're talking about Gello, but not just any
Speaker 2: gel I mean, we're gonna cover, We're gonna run the
Speaker 2: game of all gelatinous products, but specifically today we're talking
Speaker 2: about meat jello.
Speaker 1: It's a real thing, and it's something that you and
Speaker 1: I and our super producer Casey Pegrin have talked about
Speaker 1: off air in the past, before we even started doing
Speaker 1: this show, which is amazing when you think about it,
Speaker 1: You and I and Casey and probably some of you
Speaker 1: friends and neighbors have a preoccupation, a morbid fascination with gelatine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. I mean, I have a very distinct
Speaker 2: memory from my childhood, and it was my mother really
Speaker 2: prided herself on doing these very elegant table settings, and
Speaker 2: she carried on this tradition from her mother, who always
Speaker 2: used to make a little side dish with the alarmingly
Speaker 2: odd name of gentleman's salad. What is this gentleman's salad?
Speaker 2: You might ask?
Speaker 1: What is this gentleman's salad?
Speaker 2: I thought you might ask. I'll tell you what it is.
Speaker 2: Ben is a thing that was very in all the
Speaker 2: rage of the highest of fashion in the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 2: mid century and beyond, fell out of fashion a closer
Speaker 2: to the late seventies the early eighties. But we'll get
Speaker 2: to that. But what gentleman salad is is a molded
Speaker 2: gelatinous I don't know if it's a dessert. It's not
Speaker 2: really served in the place of a dessert. It's sort
Speaker 2: of a pre meal thing like you'd eat a salad.
Speaker 2: But it's not a leafy green No, it's a weird
Speaker 2: little gelatinous mound of lime green stuff that's kind of
Speaker 2: full of nuts, chopped nuts and marshmallows, I want to say,
Speaker 2: and topped with a dollop of crim fresh or horseradish, oh,
Speaker 2: if you want to get spicy right exactly. And it's
Speaker 2: one of these things that as a kid, my mom
Speaker 2: insisted that I take a bite, even though I just
Speaker 2: it was just one of those things I just didn't trust.
Speaker 2: My little kid brain kind of recoiled at it. It
Speaker 2: didn't taste awful, the horseradish, but that was apparently I
Speaker 2: was missing out on the full impact of the dish.
Speaker 2: But this was a thing, and not just meat jella,
Speaker 2: but jello in general. Gelatin salads was a very easy
Speaker 2: way for home cooks to show kind of like opulence
Speaker 2: and class and elegance.
Speaker 1: And today, we often think of a salad as something
Speaker 1: with leafy greens, right, with fresh herbs, fresh vegetables, a
Speaker 1: little bit of cheese, and maybe some protein in the
Speaker 1: form of nuts or tun or whatever. But a salad
Speaker 1: essentially is only a mixture of different ingredients. So when
Speaker 1: we're saying gelatine salad, we are accurately describing this strange
Speaker 1: phenomenon of throwing everything and the kitchen sink into gelatine.
Speaker 1: And gelatin is a very strange thing when you think
Speaker 1: about it. We know that it's ancient, that traces of
Speaker 1: gelatin were found in ancient Egypt, and we generally in
Speaker 1: the West trace the use of gelatin as a food
Speaker 1: stuff to medieval England.
Speaker 2: That's right. I actually found a gelatin recipe from seventeen
Speaker 2: forty seven from a London cookbook, from an author by
Speaker 2: the name of Hannah Glass. And we'll go into a
Speaker 2: little bit more of the modern ways of making gelatin,
Speaker 2: but this is the old school way. I'm going to
Speaker 2: read this verbatim because it is delightful. So first, take
Speaker 2: out the great bones of four calves feet and put
Speaker 2: the feet into a pot with ten quarts of water,
Speaker 2: three ounces of horse shorn, three ounces of ling glass,
Speaker 2: a nutmeg quartered, four blades of mace. Then boil this
Speaker 2: till it comes to two quarts and strain it through
Speaker 2: a flannel bag. Let it stand twenty four hours. Then
Speaker 2: scrape all the fat from the top very clean. Then
Speaker 2: slice it and put to it the whites of six
Speaker 2: eggs beaten to froth. Boil it a little and strain
Speaker 2: it again through a flannel bag. Then run the jelly
Speaker 2: into little high glasses. You may add orange flower water
Speaker 2: or wine, and sugar and lemon if you please. But
Speaker 2: this is all fancy.
Speaker 1: As you can see. We are fans of collecting recipes
Speaker 1: from olden days, and we have found that the measurements
Speaker 1: get kind of iffy and ad hockey. But this is
Speaker 1: this is a real recipe. And if you have these calves,
Speaker 1: hoofs or some orange water. Was it orange water or sugar?
Speaker 1: It was orange flower water, orange flower water. If you
Speaker 1: have this, please feel free to make it. Please send
Speaker 1: us pictures. I know all three of us would love
Speaker 1: to see it. Nowadays we use the term jello synonymously
Speaker 1: with gelatin, but Jello is a name brand with a
Speaker 1: history of its own. The mix up here the conflation
Speaker 1: is similar to the way that people say google as
Speaker 1: a verb when they're referring to any Internet So.
Speaker 2: Like Kleenex for any kind of tissue.
Speaker 1: Or like xerox for copiers or gelatin itself brand names
Speaker 1: aside is a translucent, colorless and flavorless thing on its own,
Speaker 1: and you make it using collagen from various animal parts,
Speaker 1: as we saw in our recipe with calves hooves. It's
Speaker 1: not just used in food. It's commonly used as a
Speaker 1: gelling agent in food, but it's used in a bunch
Speaker 1: of non food applications as well, photography, vitamin capsules.
Speaker 2: Sure, and the way it's made today is obviously much
Speaker 2: more of an industrial process. And just to kind of
Speaker 2: give you the quick and dirty of how it's made today,
Speaker 2: it's made using largely washed pigskins that are then cleaned.
Speaker 2: I actually found a video online where it shows the
Speaker 2: process in reverse from a nice little gummy bear being
Speaker 2: popped into someone's mouth, backward to all the different steps
Speaker 2: of the manufacturing process until it ends up with a
Speaker 2: cute little piggy looking you in the eye. I think
Speaker 2: it was kind of designed to make you feel bad
Speaker 2: about eating gummies, but we're not here to tell you
Speaker 2: what to do. We are here to tell you how
Speaker 2: gelatin is made. So these cleaned pigskins are washed and
Speaker 2: then they are soaked and they're given an acid treatment,
Speaker 2: and the idea is to break down the tissues so
Speaker 2: that the collagen is kind of made into smaller chunks
Speaker 2: in these strands of gelatin that they call it gelatin noodles.
Speaker 2: In the manufacturing process, they thicken when they're cooled, and
Speaker 2: then various stages of hot water extraction is done, and
Speaker 2: it's done up to six or seven times, with the
Speaker 2: temperature of the water being raised for every step. And
Speaker 2: the earliest extractions are apparently the more powerful, or I
Speaker 2: guess they hold their shape better, and the subsequent extractions
Speaker 2: it becomes a little bit weaker.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that baffles us about this
Speaker 1: process is that most people growing up don't know the
Speaker 1: gelatine or your favorite flavor of jello does derive ultimately
Speaker 1: from these animal proteins. I think, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: quite on the level of Santa Claus spoiler alert everybody,
Speaker 1: but I think a lot of kids have no understanding
Speaker 1: of the origin of gelatin that we just walked through
Speaker 1: and today we're asking why jello and gelatin fiend food
Speaker 1: dishes became so prevalent for a time. It was a
Speaker 1: fat They rose and they fell, and you can find
Speaker 1: different cookbooks or different articles citing this rise. But we
Speaker 1: wanted to track down the answer. And I want to
Speaker 1: give a big shout out to Dan Myers over at
Speaker 1: the Daily Meal. In January of last year, he tackled
Speaker 1: this question about why there were so many gelatin based
Speaker 1: dishes in the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties. And
Speaker 1: you know, you and I have looked through these old
Speaker 1: recipes and it's true jello today is treated mainly as
Speaker 1: a dessert, but during that time period it would be
Speaker 1: the entire meal. You would have the sweet and the
Speaker 1: savory together in this mold. There's really no other way
Speaker 1: to say it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and those molds themselves were staples of mid century
Speaker 2: kitchens and all kinds of shapes. But this goes way
Speaker 2: way farther back than the nineteen fifties and sixties, far
Speaker 2: back really to medieval England.
Speaker 1: And while while we're here in the medieval era in
Speaker 1: Western Europe, we need to add a we need to
Speaker 1: add another aspect to the story another aspect to the
Speaker 1: story gross, I'm proud of that one. So one of
Speaker 1: the one of the most important things about gelatine, aside
Speaker 1: from it being a luxurious food stuff, is that it
Speaker 1: was a pretty effective preserve. We have to remember that
Speaker 1: this was centuries before anything like refrigeration existed totally.
Speaker 2: And also not to mention an article from history dot
Speaker 2: com called Jiggle It The History of Geladin's Aspects and Jellies.
Speaker 2: The writer Nate Barksdale mentions the fact that, you know,
Speaker 2: we've talked about this in the Protestant Reformation and Butter episode.
Speaker 2: Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays, so
Speaker 2: there were late medieval cooks who came up with ways
Speaker 2: of making jelly out of fish, and that was like
Speaker 2: they would boil fish stock, even use the swim bladders
Speaker 2: and an eels were ways of making these meat jellies.
Speaker 2: And there was another fish jelly product called icing glass
Speaker 2: that was made using sturgeon. So this was a way
Speaker 2: of being able to preserve that food and also you know,
Speaker 2: not eat pig products.
Speaker 1: And jellied eels, by the way, are a traditional English
Speaker 1: dish that is still popular today. And I really want
Speaker 1: to try it. Have you ever tried jellied eals? Just
Speaker 1: on the off chance we didn't talk about Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're not into.
Speaker 2: It, not for me, thank you?
Speaker 1: Well, well, you know, let's put a pin in it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to pear pressure you, but you know,
Speaker 1: what is life if not to be lived my old friend.
Speaker 2: One more little story in Japan, even in the late
Speaker 2: sixteen hundreds, from the same hisstory dot com article, there
Speaker 2: was an innkeeper from Kyoto named Minoya Tarizoman who found
Speaker 2: some congealed soup, some fish soup that had been thrown
Speaker 2: away and discarded, and noticed that it was congealing. So
Speaker 2: that kind of became the inspiration for seaweed jellies that
Speaker 2: became quite popular throughout.
Speaker 1: Asia and remain popular today. So we're doing pretty well
Speaker 1: going chronologically here. Let's look at the first patent. The
Speaker 1: first patent for the manufacturer of gelatin arrives in seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty four in England and at the time kind of
Speaker 1: a novelty, but everybody knew about it. It's just now
Speaker 1: somebody got the rights to it and it took off,
Speaker 1: especially with the upper crust.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true, and it wasn't the patent that was
Speaker 2: going to really win the day for gelatin based products.
Speaker 2: That comes a little later, but we do have the
Speaker 2: introduction of kind of someone you could consider to be
Speaker 2: the world's first celebrity chef, a man by the name
Speaker 2: of Marie Antoine Karame, and in an NPR piece by
Speaker 2: Nicole Jankowski, she kind of describes how Karame really revolutionized
Speaker 2: the use of gelatin for these opulent culinary creations. He
Speaker 2: was actually born the sixteenth child of very very poor
Speaker 2: parents in Paris in the late seventeen hundreds, either seventeen
Speaker 2: eighty three or seventeen eighty four, and was abandoned by
Speaker 2: his parents during the most violent days of the French Revolution.
Speaker 2: Worked his way up from a kitchen boy to a
Speaker 2: apprentice of a well known pastry chef named Sylvan Bailey,
Speaker 2: and then found his way to having his own shop.
Speaker 2: And that was largely because he created these insane edible
Speaker 2: replicas of late eighteenth century buildings, some of the most
Speaker 2: famous buildings, things like the ancient ruins of Athens or
Speaker 2: Chinese fortresses and things like that, and they were quite
Speaker 2: tall and were displayed in the window of his bakery
Speaker 2: and he turned some heads, folks like Napoleon Bonaparte and
Speaker 2: French diplomats like Charles Maurice did telerand Paragord decided to
Speaker 2: employ him, and Paragord actually got him to make a
Speaker 2: full menu for his own personal estate. And it was
Speaker 2: later when his creations made it to Europe when the
Speaker 2: Prince Regent, George the fourth asked him to come over
Speaker 2: and prepare a menu for a party that he was having.
Speaker 2: You see, was a huge fan of aspic, and I've
Speaker 2: kind of been asking myself, like, what's different in aspec
Speaker 2: and gelatin in general. It turns out aspec specifically involves
Speaker 2: using like a meat broth, like it's called a consumme,
Speaker 2: and it typically is savory, so it can include things
Speaker 2: like vegetables or sliced beef or chicken or anything you
Speaker 2: could think of. And Krame coined this term chou freu,
Speaker 2: which was French for hot cold, and the idea was
Speaker 2: that parts of it would be cooked and then it
Speaker 2: would be served cold. But the whole idea was it
Speaker 2: was a big it was a show. It was a
Speaker 2: culinary display of that opulence that you talked about. This
Speaker 2: is not something that anyone could have. You had to
Speaker 2: have a whole staff to be able to prepare this thing.
Speaker 2: I mean it was a pretty serious, almost scientific process
Speaker 2: of straining and setting, and in a time before industrialization
Speaker 2: and refrigeration, it was a really big deal to be
Speaker 2: able to make this stuff. And it caught on in
Speaker 2: New York high society as well, and even Thomas Jeffer
Speaker 2: Senators Monticello Estate, was a huge fan of having wine
Speaker 2: gelatin served with meals.
Speaker 1: And that's a very interesting point there about the luxurious
Speaker 1: nature and the luxurious origin of this food stuff, of
Speaker 1: this application of food, because later we're going to see
Speaker 1: this change to a matter of convenience as well as status.
Speaker 1: We left off the story with Thomas Jefferson, Let's fast
Speaker 1: forward to eighteen forty five when we meet a fellow
Speaker 1: named Peter Cooper. Along with being the inventor of the
Speaker 1: first American built steam locomotive, Pete I'm gonna call him.
Speaker 1: Pete created a way to make gelatine more accessible to
Speaker 1: the masses by making it a powder. This is where
Speaker 1: we see another patent come into play. He called this
Speaker 1: stuff portable gelatine because all you had to do was
Speaker 1: to add hot water and Unfortunately, although it's sure caught
Speaker 1: on later, Pete did not have much success marketing it,
Speaker 1: and he didn't really pursue his invention. Occasionally he sold
Speaker 1: it to cooks, but he didn't commercialize it beyond that.
Speaker 1: He was actually more into powdered glue. Believe it or not.
Speaker 2: Why don't you think it caught on? It seemed like
Speaker 2: it was such a to do to make this stuff
Speaker 2: and for someone to be able to be like, hey,
Speaker 2: I got the quick fix right here for your gel cooking.
Speaker 1: Right. That's a good point and it's a great question.
Speaker 1: So let's go to Rochester, New York, a little town
Speaker 1: outside of there, in fact, called Leroy. This is where
Speaker 1: we meet a couple by the name of Pearl and
Speaker 1: may wait two at the time that we find them
Speaker 1: are running a not entirely successful cough syrup and laxative business.
Speaker 2: It's a good combo. They should make a combination cough
Speaker 2: syrup laxative from when you can't poop and you have
Speaker 2: a bit of a group that they can have that
Speaker 2: that can the tagline.
Speaker 1: It could be like that combination Pizza Hut and taco
Speaker 1: bell song. I think we just figured out their marketing
Speaker 1: for them.
Speaker 2: So what's the scoop, Ben, What did old pearl in
Speaker 2: May come up with?
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you asked, Noel, because fortunately for this episode,
Speaker 1: it wasn't all mediocre laxatiff business, especially because we're a
Speaker 1: family show. According to the Chemical Heritage Foundation, the Weight
Speaker 1: couple was looking around for something they could do differently right,
Speaker 1: a way to evolve their business into a more successful entity,
Speaker 1: and they obtained that earlier patent for powdered gelatin. They
Speaker 1: also encountered one of the big cons of gelatin at
Speaker 1: the time, which is that it was tasteless. It was
Speaker 1: just sort of like this translucent.
Speaker 2: Goop or you see a con. I see a blank
Speaker 2: slate rife for innovation, and luckily.
Speaker 1: They did too, because they realized that they could add
Speaker 1: syrups to this, and the gelatine, while it may not
Speaker 1: have a flavor of its own, is an excellent platform
Speaker 1: for other flavors. They blank slated it just as you said.
Speaker 1: They added sugar fruit syrups like raspberry, strawberry, lemon, orange.
Speaker 1: No word if it's orange flour, but orange that's close enough.
Speaker 2: Orange flour is so vague. What kind of flower are
Speaker 2: we talking?
Speaker 1: About I guess literally any flour that is orange rosewater.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting too, Ben, because before the Weights came
Speaker 2: into the picture, your buddy Peter Cooper, he didn't just
Speaker 2: patent the gelatin. He patented a gelatin dessert mix of
Speaker 2: his own creation, which was a powdered mix with lemons, sugar, eggs,
Speaker 2: and various spices. But he just didn't have that marketing
Speaker 2: prow ass that was required to really sell this to
Speaker 2: the world. And there was a zeitgeist, the element to
Speaker 2: this stuff too, that we'll get into in just a second.
Speaker 1: For now, you're probably wondering, folks, where did this name
Speaker 1: jello come from? We'll tell you. So the Weight couple
Speaker 1: had this gelatin idea right, and that they flavored it,
Speaker 1: made it about eighty eight percent sugar, but they were overjoyed.
Speaker 1: Nobody was worried about the sugar content at that time.
Speaker 1: They were overjoyed because it tasted good. And may wait
Speaker 1: named this new favorite dessert jello. It's important combining the
Speaker 1: words gelatine and jelly, both of which derive from the
Speaker 1: Latin meaning to congeal or to freeze.
Speaker 2: And oh man, it's good.
Speaker 1: There we go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's mine.
Speaker 1: I thought that was good. As for the O part,
Speaker 1: historians attribute it to just a naming trend. It was
Speaker 1: apparently very popular to add oh at the end of
Speaker 1: your product name.
Speaker 2: Whammo, there we go, bingo.
Speaker 1: I feel like you're on a roll tally ho which
Speaker 1: I give us that that last one is?
Speaker 2: I was old. Yeah, do you think of anything? No,
Speaker 2: you're right there, like Wizzo, like not only product names,
Speaker 2: but even like company names, right.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, Blinko, Rinko, et cetera probably had a futuristic vibe. Apparently,
Speaker 1: according to the Dictionary of Trade Origins, which is a
Speaker 1: real book, the practice began because adding oh seemed visually appealing.
Speaker 1: In addition, you could take a common word and easily
Speaker 1: modify it to make a trademark. An example would be graino,
Speaker 1: real thing.
Speaker 2: Oh, draino. That's a legacy one too. And it's cool too,
Speaker 2: because one thing that's neat about the jello thing I
Speaker 2: mean needs not the right word. But it's sort of
Speaker 2: like our buddy Edward Burnees who sort of figured out
Speaker 2: how to show the pork industry how they could sell
Speaker 2: this disgusting byproduct we now know as bacon and make
Speaker 2: it like the number one breakfast food in America. Gelatine
Speaker 2: was just a way of like using these discarded scraps
Speaker 2: and bits from the meat packing industry and turning it
Speaker 2: into something you could then sell back to the public.
Speaker 2: But the most important aspect of it that had been
Speaker 2: missing up to this point was that marketing win that
Speaker 2: Edward Burnees who is the godfather of advertising. That's sort
Speaker 2: of spin, yeah, exactly. So Pearl and May were great
Speaker 2: at making Jello, but they weren't super fantastic at selling it,
Speaker 2: and they didn't have the capital to push it out
Speaker 2: successfully in the market. And that's why on September eighth,
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety nine, the couple sold the formula, patent
Speaker 2: and the name entire Jello, the entire brand of Jello
Speaker 2: to their neighbor, a man named Frank Woodward, who at
Speaker 2: the time was the owner of the Genesee Food Company,
Speaker 2: and they sold it for about what was it, four
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty dollars. Yeah, and with our handy dandy
Speaker 2: inflation calculator, that equates to roughly eleven grand by today's standards.
Speaker 1: So Woodward knew his business. He was already successful at
Speaker 1: selling packaged food and he took the techniques he learned
Speaker 1: and applied them to jello. He had his salesforce dressed
Speaker 1: in fancy suits and go around to houses offering free samples,
Speaker 1: right just like the bad kids do in every drug
Speaker 1: war PSA the first one's free. And they would do
Speaker 1: so many things to convince grocery store owners to stock
Speaker 1: shelves with boxes of this powdered gelatine jello. And they
Speaker 1: still had the original four flavors strawberry, raspberry, lemon, and orange.
Speaker 1: But it didn't succeed. Still, like three people have tried
Speaker 1: this now with you know, middling success.
Speaker 2: And a great article on Sirius Eats by Sarah Gray
Speaker 2: that kind of chronicles the history of the jello salad
Speaker 2: mentions a little book by the name of the Jungle
Speaker 2: by Upton Sinclair. It came out in nineteen oh six
Speaker 2: that essentially single handedly helped establish the Food and Drug Act,
Speaker 2: which created the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration that
Speaker 2: we know today. And it became a big deal for
Speaker 2: food to have labels and for things to be seen
Speaker 2: as safe and pure. And Jello really jumped all over
Speaker 2: that and started using terms like the safety bag and
Speaker 2: the repeated the word pure, according to this article, no
Speaker 2: less than three times, even adding it to like the
Speaker 2: company's slogan.
Speaker 1: Right, So let's take a closer look at Woodward here.
Speaker 1: So he's doing his best. He's got the expertise. It
Speaker 1: was around nineteen oh four when he and a new
Speaker 1: employee named William Hummelbaugh had a brilliant idea. They put
Speaker 1: ads for Jello in The Lady's Home Journal, a nationally
Speaker 1: syndicated magazine, and they featured smiling, fashionable homemakers in spotless
Speaker 1: white aprons, proclaiming that jello was quote America's favorite dessert,
Speaker 1: and along with the worries of safety that were also
Speaker 1: in the zeitgeist at the time, jello was propelled to
Speaker 1: the mainstream. Annual sales jumped to two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars that would be around six a little over
Speaker 1: six million today, and kids were begging for the dessert
Speaker 1: because I'm sure, as you know, folks, if you can
Speaker 1: convince kids to want something, the parents will usually follow
Speaker 1: the lead. And as Noel said, the cookbooks began to
Speaker 1: take off. World War One did affect rationing, and after
Speaker 1: World War Two, Gelatin's success persisted, it became seen as
Speaker 1: a creative cooking tool, and at this point, finally, after
Speaker 1: numerous people had tried to market gelatine, it began to
Speaker 1: take off. And it took off in the craziest way.
Speaker 1: We found some weird examples.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. A guy named Charles Knox who had
Speaker 2: his own I don't know. I look at it as
Speaker 2: sort of the utilitarian cousin of Jello. It was just
Speaker 2: the Knox Gelatin company, and just to pack it looks
Speaker 2: very much the same today as it did then, very
Speaker 2: little bells and whistles, no flavors. He took it to
Speaker 2: the World's Fair in nineteen oh four and had a
Speaker 2: competition where anyone could submit their own recipes using gelatin,
Speaker 2: and a woman who here in this Serious Eats articles
Speaker 2: only referred to as missus John Cook from Newcastle, Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: one third prize in the competition with a thing that
Speaker 2: she created called perfection salad. Not gentleman salad. Perfection salad.
Speaker 2: And I actually found a recipe for this thing. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna describe it to you. It is a mountain of
Speaker 2: molded orange, kind of foggy gelatin, filled with an assortment
Speaker 2: of shredded ruffage, and the recipe goes like this, two
Speaker 2: envelopes unflavored gelatine, a half cup sugar, one teaspoon salt,
Speaker 2: one can apple juice, a half cup lemon juice, two
Speaker 2: tablespoons vinegar, one cup shredded carrot, one cup sliced celery,
Speaker 2: one cup finally shredded cabbage, a half cup chopped green pepper,
Speaker 2: and one can chopped pimento. And it is if absolutely
Speaker 2: foul looking, but it caught on. People loved it. They
Speaker 2: wanted to be part of the jello wave of the future,
Speaker 2: and this really kind of created this demand. And another
Speaker 2: era we're using jello showed opulence because we were entering
Speaker 2: the time of refrigeration.
Speaker 1: As the United States enters this industrial boom, the world
Speaker 1: of two point five kids, a car in every garage,
Speaker 1: and endless suburbs, people wanted to keep up with the Joneses,
Speaker 1: and one of the best ways to do it was
Speaker 1: to have the latest appliance. Right is similar to microwave cooking.
Speaker 1: A little bit later in history, people wanted to have
Speaker 1: refrigerators and if you were bringing a jello salad to
Speaker 1: the pot luck or to the party, that I don't know,
Speaker 1: the kid's birthday party, the barbecue. It showed that you
Speaker 1: and your family had one of those new fangled refrigerators.
Speaker 1: And we cannot, we cannot overestimate Missus Cook's effect on
Speaker 1: the demand for jello.
Speaker 2: Food.
Speaker 1: Historian James Beard observed in his in his book American
Speaker 1: Cookery that Missus Cook's victory at the World's Fair unleashed
Speaker 1: a demand for congealed salads that, according to Beard, this
Speaker 1: is in nineteen seventy two. He says, this a demand
Speaker 1: for congealed salads that has grown alarmingly, particularly in the suburbs.
Speaker 2: Alarmingly the invasion of the jella mold. Yeah, he went
Speaker 2: on to as well, he did, he couched it. He
Speaker 2: went on to say, quote, the jellied salad does have
Speaker 2: its delights, though, and it is without question an American innovation,
Speaker 2: no doubt about it, mister Beard here here.
Speaker 1: So now we've set the stage. We've got knocks, we've
Speaker 1: got jello. We've got people nowadays arguing that you can
Speaker 1: follow American social history by looking at the history of jello.
Speaker 2: As I know, we haven't really talked about this much,
Speaker 2: but there was a whole kind of iconography associated with
Speaker 2: jello packaging. Some of the early ones used illustrations by
Speaker 2: Norman Rockwell, right. And then there was what was it
Speaker 2: ben the jello girl, sort of like a.
Speaker 1: Spokes thing, introduced in nineteen oh eight and instrumental, crucial
Speaker 1: in making American consumers connect the idea of jello with
Speaker 1: again the purity, the innocence of childhood. And although sales
Speaker 1: of sugar and you know, therefore jello were rationed during
Speaker 1: World War One, between the twenties and thirties, the popularity
Speaker 1: of gelatin salads soars and there were pragmatic reasons behind this.
Speaker 1: The depression forced homemakers to stretch ingredients as far as possible.
Speaker 2: That also included things like sugar that you would have separately,
Speaker 2: and many recues require you to add sugar. You didn't
Speaker 2: have to do that when you're using jello because the
Speaker 2: sugar was already part of the mix.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's a really good point. And so now
Speaker 1: we see not just the idea of refrigeration that comes
Speaker 1: into play later, but we also see the idea of status,
Speaker 1: of proving to your friends and neighbors that you can
Speaker 1: still do some top notch entertaining despite the rations despite
Speaker 1: the shortages. I've got a recipe for all of relish
Speaker 1: which I've been to save you the save you the
Speaker 1: trouble here, folks, it seems kind of gross. Olives, pickles, celery,
Speaker 1: and vinegar all in a lovely a lovely amalgamation with
Speaker 1: lime jello, right right, But now we see kind of
Speaker 1: a Bernesian if I could use that word, a Bernasian
Speaker 1: approach to marketing here, or an aspect of it, because
Speaker 1: we have to ask ourselves, did people genuinely like this
Speaker 1: stuff or did they instead like being people who could
Speaker 1: make it?
Speaker 2: Well. It's like I said, with my mom and the
Speaker 2: gentleman salad, her mom would have come from that original
Speaker 2: time where this was something that was seen as a
Speaker 2: status symbol, and she was all about these status symbols.
Speaker 2: That's where my mom got the whole idea of having
Speaker 2: a lovely table place setting. It was all very, very
Speaker 2: important during times where things were much more scarce to
Speaker 2: show that you were kind of above the fray. I
Speaker 2: guess I mean it seems a little, I don't know,
Speaker 2: a little shallow to me personally, but I can see
Speaker 2: how it would have felt important to kind of keep
Speaker 2: your spirits up and to make your family feel like
Speaker 2: you had you know, you were one of the halves,
Speaker 2: I guess. But of course, like things do, these kind
Speaker 2: of Jello salad aspect meat monstrosities fell out of favor,
Speaker 2: and Jello kind of took it was its original place
Speaker 2: as an easy to make dessert. You had Bill Cosby
Speaker 2: swooping in, you know, back when he wasn't persona non
Speaker 2: grata advertising Jello jigglers. Remember Jello jigglers. Sure for kids
Speaker 2: they used like a little cookie cutter and they were
Speaker 2: a little They used a little bit stiffer gelatine, I think,
Speaker 2: so you could pick them up and play with them.
Speaker 1: They wanted a gritty reboot. You're absolutely right. By the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, the golden age of Jello
Speaker 1: had sort of passed, and that's why in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six they decided to rebrand. They got Bill Cosby, phenomenally
Speaker 1: successful comic at the time, and it was sort of
Speaker 1: the world made new because Americans were no longer as
Speaker 1: readily familiar with the concept of aspects. And if you
Speaker 1: had brought a perfection salad or a couple of other
Speaker 1: really choice gelatin dishes, that will probably read off at
Speaker 1: the end. If you brought those to a pot luck
Speaker 1: in the seventies or eighties, people would be like, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? I thought we were friends. Why can't
Speaker 1: you just tell me you don't like me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's sort of like bringing someone a fruitcake for Christmas.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we did do an episode in the Oldest Fruitcake.
Speaker 1: Remember that, I do.
Speaker 2: And it goes back to that that question you asked earlier, Ben,
Speaker 2: did people really like the way this stuff tasted? Or
Speaker 2: was it just like the placebo effect of kind of
Speaker 2: associating it with status and therefore you could choke it down.
Speaker 2: I like all kinds of stuff, Ben, I'm a relatively
Speaker 2: adventurous eater, but literally every single one of these things
Speaker 2: seems absolutely inedible and disgusting to me. And I don't
Speaker 2: think I could ever convince myself otherwise, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we also have to remember that that numerous
Speaker 1: folks in the audience wrote back about vinegar pie, and
Speaker 1: you were all absolutely correct. I'm kind of converted. Oh
Speaker 1: it sounds great, but I'm not gonna tell you what
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna try. Let's let's read off some of
Speaker 1: these gross recipes you want to for sure. All right,
Speaker 1: So emeralds candle lope is not that bad. You put lime,
Speaker 1: jello and canned pineapp on the candle.
Speaker 2: It's fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 2: It fills the it, it fills the gap.
Speaker 1: Mm hm.
Speaker 2: There's another one with a melon. You can do that
Speaker 2: kind of You cut a half a melon and a
Speaker 2: half and you put jello in the in the hole
Speaker 2: and that you know, you can scoop it out, so
Speaker 2: it's sort of like double texture for your money.
Speaker 1: Tell you what though, salmon and cottage cheese with boiled
Speaker 1: eggs as a garnish. Nah, no, sir, no, I I've
Speaker 1: just thought it's a jellied lamb salad. No, it's a pass.
Speaker 1: I know we talked about lime jelly salads, but do
Speaker 1: we talk about lime cheese salad.
Speaker 2: Nope?
Speaker 1: Do you want to skip that with it? Yeah? How
Speaker 1: do you?
Speaker 2: Oh? You know, I do have that that I think
Speaker 2: is a modern example of this actually working and for
Speaker 2: me personally, there is a place here in Atlanta called
Speaker 2: the Spotted Trotter that makes their own pataise, and a
Speaker 2: lot of patais will have a little layer of aspect
Speaker 2: on the top, so it's just like a small layer
Speaker 2: of like a ginger aspect, so that it's made with
Speaker 2: like a consume or a beef broth, but it's flavored
Speaker 2: with ginger. And when it's almost like a jelly or
Speaker 2: a chutney of some kind. So it's really good for
Speaker 2: like you know, mixing with a pet or putting on
Speaker 2: a piece of toast or something like that. It sort
Speaker 2: of mixes the savory with the sweet. But to me,
Speaker 2: it's when you really go full board down that you know,
Speaker 2: savory jello thing that's just just I like it, maybe
Speaker 2: as like a garnish or as an additive, but you know,
Speaker 2: all on its own. Oh boy, and the photography and
Speaker 2: some of these cookbooks, it's just like who gave the
Speaker 2: green light to that picture?
Speaker 1: You know. We invite you to check these out firsthand
Speaker 1: and send us some of your favorites. And favorite here
Speaker 1: is a tricky word. It can be the one that
Speaker 1: you were most fascinated by or the one you have
Speaker 1: actually tried. We of course, are not knocking anybody's personal taste.
Speaker 2: You can send us that stuff to ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
Speaker 2: dot com or hit us up on the social media
Speaker 2: the Facebook, the Instagram, where we are also Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1: As always, we'd like to thank our super producer Casey
Speaker 1: Pegram as well as author Maria Trimarchi, who wrote Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1: What's for Dinner Meet Jello available on howstufforks dot com.
Speaker 2: Also thanks to our pal Alex Williams for composing our theme,
Speaker 2: and most importantly, thanks to you guys for tuning in
Speaker 2: and hanging out with us for another episode of Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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