If you want something less sweet than salad, maybe you should try dessert

I'm used to sweet "salad" recipes. They were a genre unto themselves in old cookbooks, providing everyone with a chance to pretend it was virtuous to eat a mound of cream cheese, marshmallows, Cool Whip, Jell-O, etc., as long as there was a fruit (or at least a fruit flavoring) somewhere in there. And yet, Saint Edward's Cookbook (date unknown, ca. 1970s) still managed to surprise me.

I guess I should have been tipped off about their serious love of sweet salads when a recipe in the dessert section called for "salad marshmallows."

Yep, as far as they're concerned, the mini marshmallows were made for salads! At least this particular recipe is recognized as being a sweet, but it's still considered to have a salad ingredient.

I was entranced by the progression of orange salad recipes on one page in the salad section. The first mildly amused me by claiming that a little can of mandarin oranges was enough to make two full packages of orange Jell-O plus a pint of orange sherbet into a salad.

It seemed like so little fruit that I doubted Nancy Reilly's sincerity in calling it a salad.

Then came Orange Tapioca Salad...

...which upped the ante by using two packages of tapioca pudding and a full tub of Cool Whip with the pack of orange Jell-O-- still "healthified" by the little can of mandarin oranges.

But that wasn't enough either! The progression ended in this Orange-Tapioca Salad...

...which adds a cup of miniature marshmallows to the pudding mixes, orange Jell-O, and tub of whipped topping. At least it has the decency to double the mandarin oranges.

If you get bored of using regular "salad marshmallows" in your salad, Barbara Hagarty offers an alternative with her circus peanut salad.

It's perfect if you want to impart that weird fake banana flavor in the orange Jell-O, crushed pineapple, and Cool Whip.

If you're serious about pretending that it's a real salad and not dessert, there's even a very sweet pasta salad.

It has actual vegetables and macaroni in it, so it will look like a regular pasta salad, but the dressing is made with sweetened condensed milk and more than a cup of sugar, so I'm guessing this  is a bit sweeter than usual for a pasta salad.

The final recipe made me most excited because it's another answer to the question of how to tell a salad apart from a dessert. (Previous answers: It's salad if you put a little lettuce under it. It's salad if you use slightly less sugar than you would for dessert.)

The answer here is entirely new! Add an extra half-package of pudding to make it salad! Apparently to these ladies, dessert is actually less sweet than salad. Saint Edward's parishioners must have had some serious sweet teeth! Thanks again to my little sister for this very sweet find!