Latest / Ridiculous History / The Weird World of Meat Jell-O (Gelatin Origin Story)

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The Weird World of Meat Jell-O (Gelatin Origin Story) · Ridiculous History

0:23
Speaker 1: America's most famous dessert. There's always room for jell. Hello,
0:29
Speaker 1: my name is Ben. Oh. Yeah, that's gonna take me
0:33
Speaker 1: a minute to wrap my head around. It's not worth it. No,
0:35
Speaker 1: it is worth it. You you you kind of just
0:37
Speaker 1: broke my brain. Um. But I guess I'm Noel, and
0:40
Speaker 1: I think this is ridiculous history. And today we're talking
0:43
Speaker 1: about jello, but not just any jello. I mean we're
0:45
Speaker 1: gonna cook, We're gonna run the gamut of of all
0:47
Speaker 1: gelatinous products, but specifically today we're talking about meat jello.
0:53
Speaker 1: It's a real thing, and it's something that you and
0:56
Speaker 1: I and our superproducer Casey Pegrum have talked about off
1:02
Speaker 1: air in the past before we even started doing this show,
1:05
Speaker 1: which is amazing when you think about it. Uh, you
1:08
Speaker 1: and I and Casey and probably some of you friends
1:11
Speaker 1: and neighbors have a preoccupation, a morbid fascination with gelatin. Yeah,
1:16
Speaker 1: it's true. I mean I have a very distinct memory
1:19
Speaker 1: from my childhood. Um, and it was my mother really
1:24
Speaker 1: pride herself on doing these very elegant table settings, and
1:28
Speaker 1: she carried on this tradition from her mother who always
1:32
Speaker 1: used to make a little side dish with the alarmingly
1:35
Speaker 1: odd name of Gentleman's salad. What is this gentleman's salad?
1:40
Speaker 1: You might ask? What is this gentleman salad? I thought
1:43
Speaker 1: you might ask. I'll tell you what it is. Ben
1:46
Speaker 1: is a thing that was very in all the rage
1:49
Speaker 1: of the highest fashion in the fifties and sixties, mid
1:53
Speaker 1: century and beyond. Um fell out of fashion closer to
1:57
Speaker 1: the late seventies and early eighties. But we'll get to that.
1:59
Speaker 1: But what entleman salad is is a molded, gelatinous I
2:04
Speaker 1: don't know if it's a dessert. It's not really served
2:06
Speaker 1: in the place of a dessert. It's sort of a
2:08
Speaker 1: pre meal thing like you'd eat a salad. But it's
2:11
Speaker 1: not a leafy green No, it's a weird little gelatinous
2:15
Speaker 1: mound of lime green stuff that's kind of full of nuts,
2:21
Speaker 1: chopped nuts and marshmallows, I want to say, and topped
2:26
Speaker 1: with a dollop of crem fresh or horse radish if
2:31
Speaker 1: you want to get spicy, exactly. And it's one of
2:34
Speaker 1: these things that as a kid, my mom insisted that
2:37
Speaker 1: I take a bite, even though I just it was
2:39
Speaker 1: just one of those things I just didn't trust my
2:41
Speaker 1: little kid brain kind of recoiled at it um. It
2:44
Speaker 1: didn't taste awful that the I avoided the horse radish,
2:47
Speaker 1: but that was apparently I was missing out on the
2:49
Speaker 1: full impact of the dish. But this was a thing,
2:51
Speaker 1: and not just meat jello, but jello and general Gelatin
2:55
Speaker 1: salads was a very easy way for cooks to show
3:01
Speaker 1: kind of like opulence and and class and elegance. And
3:05
Speaker 1: today we often think of a salad as something with
3:10
Speaker 1: leafy greens, right, with fresh herbs, fresh vegetables, a little
3:13
Speaker 1: bit of cheese, and maybe some protein in the form
3:16
Speaker 1: of nazor tune or whatever. But a salad essentially is
3:20
Speaker 1: only a mixture of different ingredients. So when we're saying
3:24
Speaker 1: gelatin salad, we are accurately describing this strange phenomenon of
3:33
Speaker 1: throwing everything and the kitchen sink into gelatin. And gelatine
3:39
Speaker 1: is a very strange thing when you think about it.
3:44
Speaker 1: We know that it's ancient. We know that traces of
3:47
Speaker 1: gelatine were found in ancient Egypt, and we generally in
3:51
Speaker 1: the West trace the use of gelatine as a food
3:55
Speaker 1: stuff to medieval England. That's right, I actually found a
4:00
Speaker 1: gelatin recipe from seventy seven from a London cookbook um
4:05
Speaker 1: from an author by the name of Hannah Glass. And
4:09
Speaker 1: we'll go into a little bit more of the modern
4:11
Speaker 1: ways of making gelatine, But this is is the old
4:14
Speaker 1: school way. I'm gonna read this verbatim because it is delightful.
4:18
Speaker 1: So first take out the great bones of four calves
4:22
Speaker 1: feet and put the feet into a pot with ten
4:25
Speaker 1: quarts of water, three ounces of horse shorn, three ounces
4:28
Speaker 1: of iceland glass, a nutmeg quartered, four blades of mace.
4:32
Speaker 1: Then boil this till it comes to two quarts and
4:35
Speaker 1: strain it through a flannel bag. Let it stand twenty
4:38
Speaker 1: four hours. Then scrape all the fat from the top
4:41
Speaker 1: very clean, then slice it and put to it the
4:44
Speaker 1: whites of six eggs beaten to froth. Boil it a
4:47
Speaker 1: little and strain it again through a flannel bag. Then
4:51
Speaker 1: run the jelly into little high glasses. You may add orange,
4:54
Speaker 1: flower water, or wine, and sugar and lemon if you please,
4:57
Speaker 1: But this is all fancy. As you can see. We
5:00
Speaker 1: are fans of collecting recipes from olden days, and we
5:04
Speaker 1: have found that the measurements get kind of iffy and
5:09
Speaker 1: ad hockey. But this is This is a real recipe.
5:14
Speaker 1: And if you have these calves hooves or some orange water.
5:19
Speaker 1: Was that orange water or sugar? It was orange flower water,
5:23
Speaker 1: orange flower water. If you have this, please feel free
5:26
Speaker 1: to make it. Please send us pictures. I know all
5:29
Speaker 1: three of us would love to see it. Nowadays we
5:33
Speaker 1: use the term jello synonymously with gelatine, but Jello is
5:38
Speaker 1: a name brand with a history of its own. Uh.
5:42
Speaker 1: The mix up here, The conflation is similar to the
5:45
Speaker 1: way that people say google as a verb when they're
5:48
Speaker 1: referring to any Internet or like X for any kind
5:52
Speaker 1: of tissue, or like xerox for copiers. Gelatin itself brand
5:57
Speaker 1: names aside is a transluse sense, colorless and flavorless thing
6:02
Speaker 1: on its own, and you make it using collagen from
6:08
Speaker 1: various animal parts, as we saw in our recipe with
6:13
Speaker 1: calve's hooves. It's not just used in food. It's commonly
6:17
Speaker 1: used as a jelling agent in food, but it's used
6:20
Speaker 1: in a bunch of non food applications as well, photography,
6:24
Speaker 1: vitamin capsules, and the way it's made today is obviously
6:29
Speaker 1: much more of an industrial process. And just to kind
6:31
Speaker 1: of give you the quick and dirty of how it's
6:33
Speaker 1: made today. It's made using largely washed pig skins that
6:37
Speaker 1: are then cleaned. Actually found a video online where it
6:40
Speaker 1: shows the process in reverse, uh, from a nice little
6:44
Speaker 1: gummy bear being popped into someone's mouth backward to all
6:47
Speaker 1: the different steps of the manufacturing process until it ends
6:49
Speaker 1: up with a cute little piggy looking you in the eye.
6:52
Speaker 1: I think it was kind of designed to make you
6:54
Speaker 1: feel bad about eating gummies. But we're not here to
6:57
Speaker 1: tell you what to do. We are here to tell
6:59
Speaker 1: you how jell to this mate. So these cleaned pig
7:01
Speaker 1: skins are washed and then they are soaked and they're
7:06
Speaker 1: given an acid treatment, and the idea is to break
7:08
Speaker 1: down the tissues so that the collagen is kind of
7:13
Speaker 1: made into smaller chunks in these strands of gelatine that
7:17
Speaker 1: they call it gelatine noodles. In the manufacturing process, they
7:21
Speaker 1: thicken when they're cooled, and then various stages of hot
7:25
Speaker 1: water extraction is done, and it's done up to six
7:28
Speaker 1: or seven times, with the temperature of the water um
7:31
Speaker 1: being raised for every step UM and the earliest extractions
7:36
Speaker 1: are apparently the more powerful, or I guess they hold
7:40
Speaker 1: their shape better and the subsequent extractions, it becomes a
7:43
Speaker 1: little bit weaker. And one of the things that baffles
7:48
Speaker 1: us about this process is that most people growing up
7:52
Speaker 1: don't know the gelatine or your favorite flavor of jello
7:56
Speaker 1: does derive ultimately from these animal proteins. I think, you know,
8:02
Speaker 1: it's not quite on the level of Santa Claus spoiler
8:05
Speaker 1: alert everybody, but I think a lot of kids have
8:08
Speaker 1: no understanding of the origin of gelatine that we just
8:12
Speaker 1: walked through. And today we're asking why jello and gelatine
8:20
Speaker 1: fiend food dishes became so prevalent for a time. It
8:25
Speaker 1: was a fat They rose and they fell, and you
8:28
Speaker 1: can find different cookbooks or different articles citing this rise.
8:32
Speaker 1: But we wanted to track down the answer. And I
8:35
Speaker 1: want to give a big shout out to Dan Myers
8:37
Speaker 1: over at the Daily Meal. In January of last year,
8:41
Speaker 1: he tackled this question about why there were so many
8:45
Speaker 1: gelatine based dishes in the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties.
8:49
Speaker 1: And you know, you and I have looked through these
8:53
Speaker 1: old recipes and it's true jello today is treated mainly
8:57
Speaker 1: as a dessert, but during that time period it it
9:00
Speaker 1: would be the entire meal. You would have the sweet
9:03
Speaker 1: and the savory together in this mold. There's really no
9:07
Speaker 1: other way to say it. And those molds themselves were
9:09
Speaker 1: staples of mid century kitchens and all kinds of shapes.
9:13
Speaker 1: But this goes way way farther back than um the
9:17
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and sixties, far back really to medieval England.
9:22
Speaker 1: And while we're while we're here in the medieval era
9:27
Speaker 1: in Western Europe, we need to add a we need
9:31
Speaker 1: to add another aspect to the story, another aspect to
9:35
Speaker 1: the story. I'm proud of that one. So one of
9:38
Speaker 1: the one of the most important things about gelatine, aside
9:41
Speaker 1: from it being a luxurious food stuff, is that it
9:43
Speaker 1: was a pretty effective preserver. We have to remember that
9:48
Speaker 1: this was centuries before anything like refrigeration existed totally. And
9:53
Speaker 1: also not to mention, an article from history dot com
9:57
Speaker 1: called Jiggle It The History of Gelatine's Aspects and jellies Um.
10:00
Speaker 1: The writer Nate Barksdale mentioned the fact that you know,
10:03
Speaker 1: we've talked about this in the Protestant Information and Butter episode.
10:07
Speaker 1: Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays, so
10:10
Speaker 1: there were late medieval cooks who came up with ways
10:14
Speaker 1: of making jelly out of fish, and that was like
10:18
Speaker 1: that you would boil fish stock, even use the swim bladders.
10:23
Speaker 1: Um and an eels were ways of making these, uh
10:28
Speaker 1: these meat jellies. And there was another fish jelly product
10:31
Speaker 1: called icing glass that was made using sturgeon. So this
10:36
Speaker 1: was a way of being able to preserve that food
10:39
Speaker 1: and also you know not eat pig products. And jellied eels,
10:44
Speaker 1: by the way, are a traditional English dish that is
10:47
Speaker 1: still popular today and I really want to try it.
10:50
Speaker 1: Have you ever tried jellied eels? Just on the off
10:52
Speaker 1: chance we didn't talk about No, no, you're not into it,
10:56
Speaker 1: not for me, thank you? Well, well, you know, let's
10:59
Speaker 1: put a p in in it. I don't want to
11:00
Speaker 1: peer pressure you, but you know, what is life if
11:04
Speaker 1: not to be lived, my old friend. One more little
11:07
Speaker 1: story in Japan, even in the late sixteen hundreds, from
11:11
Speaker 1: the same history dot com article, there was an innkeeper
11:13
Speaker 1: from Kyoto named Minoya Tara Zoman who found some congealed soup,
11:19
Speaker 1: some fish soup that had been thrown away and discarded,
11:22
Speaker 1: and noticed that it was congealing. So that kind of
11:25
Speaker 1: became the inspiration for seaweed jellies that became quite popular
11:30
Speaker 1: throughout Asia and remain popular today. So we're doing pretty
11:34
Speaker 1: well going chronologically here. Let's look at the first patent.
11:39
Speaker 1: The first patent for the manufacture of gelatine arrives in
11:42
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty four in England and at the time kind
11:48
Speaker 1: of a novelty, but everybody knew about it. It's just
11:51
Speaker 1: now somebody got the rights to it and it took off,
11:55
Speaker 1: especially with the upper crust. Yeah, that's true, and it
11:59
Speaker 1: wasn't the pat that was going to really win the
12:01
Speaker 1: day for gelatine based products. That comes a little later.
12:05
Speaker 1: But we do have the introduction of kind of someone
12:08
Speaker 1: you could consider to be the world's first celebrity chef,
12:11
Speaker 1: a man by the name of Marie Antoine Kara May
12:14
Speaker 1: and in an NPR piece by Nicole Jankowski Um, she
12:20
Speaker 1: kind of describes how karamy Um really revolutionized the use
12:26
Speaker 1: of gelatine for these opulent culinary creations. Um he was
12:30
Speaker 1: actually born uh sixteenth child of very very poor parents
12:35
Speaker 1: in Paris in the late seventeen hundreds either see or
12:39
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty four UM and was abandoned by his parents
12:42
Speaker 1: during the most violent days of the French Revolution. He
12:46
Speaker 1: worked his way up from a kitchen boy to an
12:50
Speaker 1: apprentice of a well known pastry chef named Sylvan Bailey,
12:54
Speaker 1: and then found his way to having his own shop.
12:57
Speaker 1: And that was largely because he created these insane edible
13:02
Speaker 1: replicas of late eighteenth century building, some of the most
13:06
Speaker 1: famous buildings, things like the ancient ruins of Athens or
13:10
Speaker 1: Chinese fortresses and things like that. And they were quite
13:13
Speaker 1: tall and were displayed in the window his bakery, and
13:17
Speaker 1: he turned some heads, folks like Napoleon Bonaparte and French
13:21
Speaker 1: diplomats like Charles Maurice did Teleyrand Paragord decided to employ him,
13:27
Speaker 1: and Paragord actually got him to make a full menu
13:30
Speaker 1: for his own personal estate. And it was later when
13:33
Speaker 1: he his creations made it to Europe when the Prince Regent,
13:39
Speaker 1: George the Fourth asked him to come over and prepare
13:42
Speaker 1: a menu for a party that he was having. Kara
13:46
Speaker 1: Macy was a huge fan of Aspect, and I've kind
13:50
Speaker 1: of been asking myself, like, what's the between aspect and
13:51
Speaker 1: gelatine in general. It turns out Aspect specifically involves using
13:55
Speaker 1: like a meat broth like, it's called a consumm and
13:58
Speaker 1: it typically is savory, so it can include things like
14:02
Speaker 1: vegetables or sliced beef or chicken or anything you could
14:06
Speaker 1: think of. And Kara May coined this term show freud,
14:10
Speaker 1: which was French for hot cold, and the idea was
14:13
Speaker 1: that parts of it would be cooked and then it
14:15
Speaker 1: would be served cold. But the whole idea was it
14:19
Speaker 1: was a big it was a show. It was a
14:21
Speaker 1: culinary display of that opulence that you talked about. This
14:25
Speaker 1: is not something that anyone could have. You had to
14:27
Speaker 1: have a whole staff to be able to prepare this thing.
14:30
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a pretty serious, almost scientific process
14:33
Speaker 1: of straining and setting, and in a time before industrialization
14:38
Speaker 1: and refrigeration, it was a really big deal to be
14:40
Speaker 1: able to make this stuff. And it caught on in
14:43
Speaker 1: New York high society as well, and even Thomas Jefferson,
14:46
Speaker 1: it is Monticello Estate was a huge fan of having
14:50
Speaker 1: um wine gelatin served with meals. And that's a that's
14:54
Speaker 1: a very interesting point there about the luxurious nature, lit
14:58
Speaker 1: luxurious origin of this food stuff, of this application of food,
15:03
Speaker 1: because later we're going to see this change to a
15:05
Speaker 1: matter of convenience as well as status. We left off
15:15
Speaker 1: the story with Thomas Jefferson. Let's fast forward to eighteen
15:19
Speaker 1: forty five when we meet a fellow named Peter Cooper.
15:23
Speaker 1: Along with being the inventor of the first American built
15:27
Speaker 1: steam locomotive, Pete I'm gonna call him, Pete created a
15:31
Speaker 1: way to make gelatine more accessible to the masses by
15:35
Speaker 1: making it a powder. Uh. This is where we see
15:38
Speaker 1: another patent come into play. He called this stuff portable
15:42
Speaker 1: gelatine because all you had to do was to add
15:46
Speaker 1: hot water. And unfortunately, although it's sure caught on later, uh,
15:52
Speaker 1: Pete did not have much success marketing it and he
15:55
Speaker 1: didn't really pursue his invention. Occasionally he sold it to cooks,
16:00
Speaker 1: but he didn't commercialize it beyond that. He was actually
16:05
Speaker 1: more into powdered glue. Believe it or not. Why don't
16:07
Speaker 1: you think it caught on? And it seemed like it
16:08
Speaker 1: was such a to do to make this stuff and
16:10
Speaker 1: for someone to be able to be like, hey, I
16:12
Speaker 1: got the quick fix right here for you for your
16:14
Speaker 1: gel cooking. Right, that's a good point. It's a great question.
16:19
Speaker 1: So let's go to Rochester, New York, A little town
16:23
Speaker 1: outside of there, in fact, called Leroy. This is where
16:26
Speaker 1: we meet a couple by the name of Pearl and
16:29
Speaker 1: May Wait, who at the time that we find them
16:32
Speaker 1: are running a not entirely successful cough syrup and laxative business.
16:38
Speaker 1: It's a good combo. They should make a combination cough
16:40
Speaker 1: syrup laxative from when you can't poop and you have
16:43
Speaker 1: a bit of a group and that can they can
16:45
Speaker 1: have that. That can be the tagline. It could be
16:49
Speaker 1: like that combination pizza Hutt and taco bell song. I
16:53
Speaker 1: think we just figured out their marketing for them. So
16:55
Speaker 1: what's the scoop? Ben? What? What? What? What? What did
16:58
Speaker 1: old Pearl and May come up with? I'm so glad
17:01
Speaker 1: you asked, because fortunately for this episode it wasn't all
17:05
Speaker 1: uh mediocre laxtive business, especially because we're a family show.
17:10
Speaker 1: According to the Chemical Heritage Foundation, the Wait couple was
17:15
Speaker 1: looking around for something they could do differently right away
17:20
Speaker 1: to evolve their business into a more successful entity, and
17:23
Speaker 1: they obtained that earlier patent for powdered gelatine. They also
17:28
Speaker 1: encountered one of the big cons of gelatine at the time,
17:31
Speaker 1: which is that it was tasteless. It was just sort
17:34
Speaker 1: of like this translucent goop or you see a con.
17:37
Speaker 1: I see a blank slate. Rife for innovation, and luckily
17:41
Speaker 1: they did too, because they realized that they could add
17:44
Speaker 1: syrups to this, and the gelatine, while it may not
17:47
Speaker 1: have a flavor of its own, is an excellent platform
17:51
Speaker 1: for other flavors. They blank slated it just as you said.
17:54
Speaker 1: They added sugary fruit syrups like raspberry, strawberry, lemon, orange.
18:00
Speaker 1: No word if it's orange flower, but orange that's close enough.
18:03
Speaker 1: Orange flower is so vague. What kind of flower are
18:05
Speaker 1: we talking about? I guess literally any flower that is
18:07
Speaker 1: orange rose water. Yeah. It's interesting too, Ben, because before
18:11
Speaker 1: the weights came into the picture, your buddy Peter Cooper,
18:15
Speaker 1: he didn't just patent the gelatine. He patented a gelatine
18:17
Speaker 1: dessert mix of his own creation, which was a powdered
18:21
Speaker 1: mix with lemons um, sugar, eggs, and various spices. But
18:25
Speaker 1: he just didn't have that marketing prow ass that was
18:29
Speaker 1: required to really sell this to the world. And there
18:32
Speaker 1: was a zeitgeist, the element to this stuff too, that
18:34
Speaker 1: we'll get into in just a second. For now, you're
18:36
Speaker 1: probably wondering, folks, where did this name jello come from?
18:41
Speaker 1: We'll tell you. So. The weight couple had this gelatine idea, right,
18:45
Speaker 1: and the way that they flavored it made it about
18:47
Speaker 1: eight percent sugar, but they were overjoyed. Nobody was worried
18:52
Speaker 1: about the sugar content at that time. They were overjoyed
18:54
Speaker 1: because it tasted good. And may wait named this new
18:58
Speaker 1: favorite dessert jello. It's a portmanteau combining the words gelatin
19:04
Speaker 1: and jelly, both of which derived from the Latin meaning
19:07
Speaker 1: to congeal or to freeze. And oh, man, it's good.
19:11
Speaker 1: There we go. Yeah, that was good. As for the
19:15
Speaker 1: O part, historians attributed it to just a naming trend.
19:20
Speaker 1: It was apparently very popular to add oh at the
19:23
Speaker 1: end of your product name. Wammo, there we go, bingo,
19:28
Speaker 1: I feel like you're on a roll tally ho what
19:31
Speaker 1: give us that that last one is? Yeah? You don't
19:34
Speaker 1: if any Now you're right there, like wizzoh, Like not
19:36
Speaker 1: only product names, but even like company names, right sure, yeah, blinko, rinko,
19:40
Speaker 1: et cetera. Probably had like a futuristic vibe. Apparently, according
19:45
Speaker 1: to the Dictionary of Trade Named Origins, which is a
19:47
Speaker 1: real book. The practice began because adding oh seemed visually appealing.
19:53
Speaker 1: In addition, you could take a common word and easily
19:57
Speaker 1: modify it to make a trademark. An example would be
20:01
Speaker 1: grain o real thing. That's so that's a legacy one too,
20:06
Speaker 1: And it's cool too, because the one thing that's neat
20:07
Speaker 1: about the jello thing, I mean needs not the right word.
20:10
Speaker 1: But it's sort of like our buddy Edward Burnet's who
20:13
Speaker 1: sort of figured out how to to, you know, show
20:15
Speaker 1: the pork industry how they could sell this disgusting byproduct
20:20
Speaker 1: we now know as bacon and make it like the
20:23
Speaker 1: number one breakfast food in America. Gelatin was just a
20:27
Speaker 1: way of like using these discarded scraps and bits from
20:32
Speaker 1: the meat packing industry and turning it into something you
20:35
Speaker 1: could then sell back to the public. But the most
20:37
Speaker 1: important aspect of it that had been missing up to
20:39
Speaker 1: this point was that marketing win that Edward Burnet's, who
20:43
Speaker 1: was the godfather of advertising that sort of spin. Yeah, exactly. So.
20:49
Speaker 1: Pearl and May were great at making jello, but they
20:53
Speaker 1: weren't super fantastic at selling it, and they didn't have
20:57
Speaker 1: the capital to push it out successfully. In the more.
21:00
Speaker 1: And that's why on September eight, the couple sold the
21:04
Speaker 1: formula patent and the name entire Jello, the entire brand
21:08
Speaker 1: of Jello, to their neighbor man named Frank Woodward, who
21:13
Speaker 1: at the time was the owner of the Genesee Food Company,
21:15
Speaker 1: and they sold it for about what was it, four
21:18
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars. Yeah, and with our handy dandy inflation calculator,
21:21
Speaker 1: that equates to roughly eleven grand by today's standards. So
21:26
Speaker 1: Woodward knew his business. He was already successful at selling
21:31
Speaker 1: packaged food, and he took the techniques he learned and
21:34
Speaker 1: applied them to Jello. He had his salesforce dressed in
21:37
Speaker 1: fancy suits and go around the houses offering free samples,
21:42
Speaker 1: right just like the bad kids do in every drug
21:46
Speaker 1: warning p s A. The first one is free. And
21:49
Speaker 1: they would do so many things to convince grocery store
21:55
Speaker 1: owners to stock shelves with boxes of this powder gelatin Jello.
21:59
Speaker 1: And they still had the original four flavors strawberry, raspberry, lemon,
22:04
Speaker 1: and orange. But it didn't succeed. Still, like three people
22:10
Speaker 1: have tried this now with you know, middling success and
22:13
Speaker 1: a great article on Sirius Eats by Sarah Gray that
22:16
Speaker 1: kind of chronicles the history of the Jello salad um mentions.
22:20
Speaker 1: A little book by the name of the Jungle by
22:24
Speaker 1: Upton Sinclair came out in nineteen o six that essentially
22:27
Speaker 1: single handedly helped establish the Food and Drug Act, which
22:31
Speaker 1: created the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration that we
22:34
Speaker 1: know today. And it became a big deal um for
22:38
Speaker 1: food to have labels and for things to be seen
22:41
Speaker 1: as safe and pure. And Jello really jumped all over
22:45
Speaker 1: that and started using terms like the safety bag and
22:49
Speaker 1: the repeated the word pure um according to this article
22:53
Speaker 1: no less than three times, even adding it to like
22:55
Speaker 1: the company's slogan. Right, So let's let's take a closer
23:00
Speaker 1: look at Woodward here. So he's doing his best, he's
23:03
Speaker 1: got the expertise. It was around nineteen o four when
23:07
Speaker 1: he and a new employee named William hummel Ball had
23:12
Speaker 1: a brilliant idea. They put ads for Jello in the
23:17
Speaker 1: Ladies Home Journal and nationally syndicated magazine, and they featured smiling,
23:23
Speaker 1: fashionable homemakers in spotless white aprons, proclaiming that jello was
23:30
Speaker 1: quote America's favorite dessert and along with the worries of
23:36
Speaker 1: safety that we're also in the zeitgeist. At the time,
23:39
Speaker 1: Jello was propelled to the mainstream. Annual sales jumped to
23:44
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that that would be
23:47
Speaker 1: around six a little over six million today, and kids
23:52
Speaker 1: were begging for the dessert because I'm sure, as you know, folks,
23:56
Speaker 1: if you can convince kids to want something, the parents
23:59
Speaker 1: will you usually follow the lead. And as Noel said,
24:04
Speaker 1: the cookbooks began to take off. World War One did
24:10
Speaker 1: affect rationing, and after World War Two, Gelatin's success persisted.
24:16
Speaker 1: It became seen as a creative cooking tool. And at
24:22
Speaker 1: this point, finally, after numerous people had tried to market gelatin,
24:28
Speaker 1: it began to take off. It took off in the
24:33
Speaker 1: craziest way. We found. We found some weird examples. Yeah,
24:36
Speaker 1: it's true. A guy named Charles Knox who had his
24:38
Speaker 1: own I don't know. I look at it as sort
24:40
Speaker 1: of the utilitarian cousin of Jello. It was just the
24:43
Speaker 1: Knox Gelatin Company, um, and it was just a packet.
24:46
Speaker 1: It looks very much the same today as it did then,
24:48
Speaker 1: very little bells and whistles, no flavors, He took it
24:52
Speaker 1: to the World's Fair in nineteen o four and had
24:55
Speaker 1: a competition where um, anyone could submit their own recipes
24:59
Speaker 1: using gelatine. And a woman who here in this Serious
25:03
Speaker 1: Eats article is only referred to as Mrs John Cook
25:06
Speaker 1: from Newcastle, Pennsylvania one third prize in the competition with
25:11
Speaker 1: a thing that she created called perfection salad, not gentleman salad.
25:15
Speaker 1: Perfection salad. And I actually found a recipe for this thing.
25:19
Speaker 1: I'm gonna describe it to you. Um. It is a
25:22
Speaker 1: mountain of molded orange, kind of foggy gelatin, filled with
25:29
Speaker 1: an assortment of shredded uh rough etsch And the recipe
25:33
Speaker 1: goes like this. Two envelopes unflavored gelatine, a half cup sugar,
25:37
Speaker 1: one teaspoons salt, one can apple juice, a half cup
25:41
Speaker 1: lemon juice, two tablespoons vinegar, one cup shredded carrot, one
25:45
Speaker 1: cup sliced celery, one cup finally shredded cabbage, a half
25:48
Speaker 1: cup chopped green pepper, and one can chopped pimiento. Um.
25:53
Speaker 1: And it is if absolutely foul looking, but it caught on.
25:57
Speaker 1: People loved it. They wanted to be part of the
25:59
Speaker 1: jello wave. Of the future, and this really kind of
26:02
Speaker 1: created this demand. And another era we're using jello showed
26:07
Speaker 1: opulence because we were entering the time of refrigeration. As
26:16
Speaker 1: the United States enters this industrial boom, the world of
26:23
Speaker 1: two point five kids, a car in every garage, and
26:26
Speaker 1: endless suburbs, people wanted to keep up with the Joneses
26:31
Speaker 1: and one of the best ways to do it was
26:33
Speaker 1: to have the latest appliance. Right is similar to microwave cooking.
26:39
Speaker 1: A little bit later in history, people wanted to have refrigerators.
26:42
Speaker 1: And if you were bringing a jellous salad to the
26:46
Speaker 1: pot luck or to the party that I don't know,
26:49
Speaker 1: the kid's birthday party, of the barbecue, it showed that
26:53
Speaker 1: you and your family had one of those new fangled refrigerators.
26:57
Speaker 1: And we cannot, we cannot overestimate Mrs Cook's effect on
27:02
Speaker 1: the demand for jello. Food. Historian James Beard observed in
27:07
Speaker 1: his in his book American Cookery that Mrs Cook's victory
27:13
Speaker 1: at the World's Fair unleashed a demand for congealed salads that,
27:17
Speaker 1: according to Beard, this is the nineteen seventy two He says,
27:20
Speaker 1: this a demand for congealed salads that has grown alarmingly,
27:23
Speaker 1: particularly in the suburbs, alarmingly the invasion of the jello mold.
27:28
Speaker 1: He went on, as well, he did, he couched it.
27:31
Speaker 1: He went on to say, quote, the jellied salad does
27:33
Speaker 1: have its delights, though, and it is without question an
27:36
Speaker 1: American innovation, no doubt about it. Mr Beard here here.
27:41
Speaker 1: So now we've we've set the stage. We've got knocks,
27:45
Speaker 1: we've got jello. We've got people nowadays arguing that you
27:49
Speaker 1: can follow American social history by looking at the history
27:52
Speaker 1: of jello ass And now we haven't really talked about
27:55
Speaker 1: this much, but there was a whole kind of iconography
27:57
Speaker 1: associated with jello packaging. Some of early ones used illustrations
28:01
Speaker 1: by Norman Rockwell, right. And then there was what was
28:04
Speaker 1: it been, the jello girl, sort of like a spokes thing,
28:08
Speaker 1: introduced in nineteen o eight and instrumental, crucial in making
28:15
Speaker 1: American consumers connect the idea of jello with again the purity,
28:20
Speaker 1: the innocence of childhood. And although sales of sugar and
28:26
Speaker 1: you know, therefore, jello were rationed during World War One.
28:30
Speaker 1: Between the twenties and thirties, the popularity of gelatin salads
28:34
Speaker 1: sores and there were pragmatic reasons behind this. The depression
28:39
Speaker 1: forced homemakers to stretch ingredients as far as possible. That
28:45
Speaker 1: also included things like sugar that you would have separately
28:47
Speaker 1: in many recipes require you to add sugar. You didn't
28:50
Speaker 1: have to do that when you're using jello because the
28:52
Speaker 1: sugar was already part of the mix. Yeah, that's that's
28:55
Speaker 1: a really good point. And so now we see not
28:59
Speaker 1: just the idea of refrigeration that comes into plate later,
29:02
Speaker 1: but we also see the idea of status, of proving
29:06
Speaker 1: to your friends and neighbors that you can still do
29:09
Speaker 1: some top notch entertaining despite the rations, despite the shortages.
29:13
Speaker 1: I've got a recipe for all of relish, which I've
29:16
Speaker 1: been a savior, the savior the trouble here, folks, it
29:19
Speaker 1: seems kind of gross. Olives, pickles, celery, and vinegar all
29:23
Speaker 1: in a lovely, a lovely amalgamation with lime jello. Right right,
29:30
Speaker 1: But but now we see kind of a Bernesian, if
29:35
Speaker 1: I could use that word, bern Asian approach to marketing here,
29:40
Speaker 1: or and aspect of it, because we have to ask ourselves,
29:42
Speaker 1: did people genuinely like this stuff or did they instead
29:47
Speaker 1: like being people who could make it. Well, it's like
29:51
Speaker 1: I said, with my mom and the gentleman salad. Her
29:54
Speaker 1: mom would have come from that original time where this
29:57
Speaker 1: was something that was seen as a status symbol, and
30:00
Speaker 1: she was all about these statas symbols. That's where my
30:02
Speaker 1: mom got the whole idea of having a lovely table
30:05
Speaker 1: place setting. It was all very very important during times
30:08
Speaker 1: where things were much more scarce to show that you
30:11
Speaker 1: were kind of above the fray. I guess. I mean
30:14
Speaker 1: it seems a little, I don't know, a little shallow
30:16
Speaker 1: to me personally, but I can see how it would
30:19
Speaker 1: have felt important to kind of keep your spirits up
30:22
Speaker 1: and to make your family feel like you had you know,
30:24
Speaker 1: you were one of the halves. I guess um. But
30:27
Speaker 1: of course, like things do, these these kind of jello
30:32
Speaker 1: salad aspect meat monstrosities fell out of favor and jello
30:37
Speaker 1: kind of took its was its original place as an
30:41
Speaker 1: easy to make dessert. You had Bill Cosby swooping in,
30:45
Speaker 1: you know, back when he wasn't persona non grata, uh,
30:49
Speaker 1: advertising Jello jigglers. Remember, Jello jigglers was for kids. They
30:53
Speaker 1: used like a little cookie cutter and they were a
30:55
Speaker 1: little they used a little bit stiffer gelatine, I think,
30:58
Speaker 1: so you could pick them up and play with them.
31:01
Speaker 1: They wanted a gritty reboot. You're absolutely right. By the
31:03
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, the golden age of Jello
31:08
Speaker 1: had sort of passed. And that's why in nine six
31:10
Speaker 1: they decided to rebrand. They got Bill Cosby, phenomenally successful
31:15
Speaker 1: comic at the time. Uh. And it was sort of
31:18
Speaker 1: the world made new because Americans were no longer as
31:23
Speaker 1: readily familiar with the concept of aspects. And if you
31:28
Speaker 1: had brought a perfection salad or a couple of other
31:32
Speaker 1: really choice gentatsin dishes that will probably read off at
31:36
Speaker 1: the end. If you brought those to a potluck in
31:38
Speaker 1: the seventies or eighties, people would be like, what are
31:40
Speaker 1: you doing? I thought we were friends. Why why can't
31:44
Speaker 1: you just tell me you don't like me? Exactly? Yeah,
31:46
Speaker 1: it's sort of like bringing someone a fruitcake for Christmas.
31:49
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we did do an episode and the oldest fruitcake,
31:53
Speaker 1: remember that. And it goes back to that that question
31:56
Speaker 1: you asked earlier, Ben, Did people really like the way
31:58
Speaker 1: this stuff tasted or was it just like the placebo
32:01
Speaker 1: effect of kind of associating it with status, and therefore
32:04
Speaker 1: you could choke it down. Um. I like all kinds
32:07
Speaker 1: of stuff, Ben, I'm a relatively adventurous eater, but literally
32:10
Speaker 1: every single one of these things seems absolutely inedible and
32:13
Speaker 1: disgusting to me. And I don't think I could ever
32:17
Speaker 1: convince myself otherwise, you know. Yeah, but we also have
32:20
Speaker 1: to remember that that numerous folks in the audience wrote
32:25
Speaker 1: back about vinegar pie, and you were all absolutely correct.
32:28
Speaker 1: I'm kind of converted. Oh it sounds great, but I'm
32:31
Speaker 1: not gonna try and tell you what I'm not gonna try.
32:33
Speaker 1: Let's let's read off some these gross recipes, all right,
32:36
Speaker 1: So Emerald cantle ope is not that bad. You put lime,
32:40
Speaker 1: jello and can pineapple on the candle. It's fun. Yeah,
32:43
Speaker 1: it's fun. It fills the is it, It fills the gap.
32:46
Speaker 1: There's another one with a with a melon. You can
32:48
Speaker 1: do that kind of You cut a half a melon
32:49
Speaker 1: in half and and you put jello in the in
32:51
Speaker 1: the hole and that you know, you can scoop it out,
32:53
Speaker 1: so it's sort of like a double texture for your money.
32:55
Speaker 1: Tell you what, though, Salmon and cottage cheese with boiled
33:00
Speaker 1: eggs as a garnish, No, sir, No, I'm just thoted
33:04
Speaker 1: to a jelly lamb salad. No has a pass. I
33:08
Speaker 1: know we talked about lime jelly salads, but do we
33:11
Speaker 1: talk about lime cheese salad? Nope? Do you want to
33:15
Speaker 1: skip that with? Oh? I you know, I do have
33:19
Speaker 1: that that I think is a modern example of this
33:21
Speaker 1: actually working and and for me personally, Um, there is
33:24
Speaker 1: a place here in Atlanta called the Spotted Trotter that
33:26
Speaker 1: makes their own pattas, and a lot of pattas will
33:30
Speaker 1: have a little layer of aspect on the top, so
33:32
Speaker 1: it's just like a small layer of like a ginger aspect,
33:36
Speaker 1: so that it's made with like a consumer of beef broth,
33:39
Speaker 1: but it's flavored with ginger and when it's almost like
33:42
Speaker 1: a jelly or a chutney of some kind. So it's
33:45
Speaker 1: really good for like you know, mixing with a pat
33:48
Speaker 1: or putting on a piece of toast or something like that.
33:50
Speaker 1: It sort of mixes the savory with the sweet. But
33:52
Speaker 1: to me, it's when you really go full board down
33:55
Speaker 1: that you know, savory jello thing. That's just it's just
33:59
Speaker 1: I like it maybe as like a garnish or as
34:01
Speaker 1: an additive, but you know, all on its own. Oh boy,
34:05
Speaker 1: and the photography and some of these cookbooks, it's just
34:08
Speaker 1: like who gave the green light to that picture? You know.
34:11
Speaker 1: We invite you to check these out firsthand and send
34:14
Speaker 1: us some of your favorites and favorite here is a
34:19
Speaker 1: tricky word. It can be the one that you were
34:21
Speaker 1: most fascinated by or the one you have actually tried.
34:25
Speaker 1: We we, of course, they're not knocking anybody's personal taste.
34:29
Speaker 1: You can send us that stuff too ridiculous at how
34:32
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com or hit us up on the
34:34
Speaker 1: social media the Facebook, the Instagram. We are also Ridiculous History.
34:38
Speaker 1: As always, we'd like to thank our super producer Casey
34:42
Speaker 1: Pegram as well as author Maria tri Marchie, who wrote
34:46
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History. What's for Dinner? Meet Jello available on how
34:50
Speaker 1: Stuff works dot com. Also thanks to our pal Alex
34:52
Speaker 1: Williams for composing our theme um and most importantly, thanks
34:56
Speaker 1: to you guys for tuning in and hanging out with
34:58
Speaker 1: us for another episode of Ridiculous History. We'll see you
35:00
Speaker 1: next time.