Be glad I held off on the "Knox Knox" jokes....

When we think of all the glorious/ scary/ gloriously scary retro gelatin dishes, we tend to think of Jell-O. Jell-O was not the only game in town, though. Lots of people wanted in on that sweet gelatin money, so earlier in the 20th century, there were plenty of brands to choose from.

One of the more popular non-Jell-O brands was Knox, as you will see from this 1936 pamphlet:

The recipes are mostly pretty basic (and sound pretty good): various combinations of flavored Knox Jell, whipped cream, fruit, and/or marshmallows.

I was a bit puzzled by this one, though:

Why serve slices of fatty meat and radish roses with hexagons of lime gelatin?

If you're a lamb eater, you're probably a step ahead of me on this one: lamb goes with mint.

So are those sparkling green molds lime or mint?

The answer, of course, is both! Apparently, all it takes to make lime gelatin into mint is to add a few drops of mint flavoring. Why you'd want to work to make lime-y "mint" molds when it would be easier (and probably mintier-tasting) to crack open a jar of actual mint jelly was beyond me... until I considered that a lot of 1930s women probably made their own mint jelly, too. Then this alternative looked a little better.

I also loved this picture:

It's just so perky and shiny. It looks like it could deflect a bullet! And I am a sucker for prunes stuffed with walnut halves because they look like tiny alien heads with their brains exposed. The mold is made of some kind of rare metal and whoever is guarding it has surrounded it with dead aliens' heads to suggest that anyone else who wants to try stealing it should think twice.... (Prunes all by themselves would probably deter me from touching this, but I am kind of picky.)

How do you make this "treasure"?

It's pretty easy: lemon gelatin with crushed pineapple, whipped cream, and "prune pulp."

Of course, Knox gelatin might be familiar to a few of you-- especially those who like to make retro recipes. Why? They're still around. They only make unflavored gelatin, now, though, but you can see it's the brand I used in both Pieathalons.

Why don't they make flavored Knox anymore? Knox is now owned by Kraft, which also owns (*Ding! Ding! Ding!*)-- you guessed it-- Jell-O!

Happy Wednesday! I hope you enjoyed this foray into gelatin dessert mix history.