Post-Thanksgiving Cranberry Follies

When I said that Recipes on Parade: Salads Including Appetizers (Military Officers' Wives Clubs, 1966) had a lot of cranberry salads, I was serious. I posted a bunch of those recipes before Thanksgiving, but I thought I'd keep it going after Thanksgiving with some recipes to use up the leftovers: salads with both cranberry products and poultry. (Okay, most of these call for chicken, but I'm sure turkey would be a fine sub.)

I was surprised by just how popular these types of salads were. Even former First Lady Mrs. Eisenhower sent in a recipe for Chicken Jewel Ring Salad.

Luckily, the recipes generally follow this formula of making the cranberry sauce into one layer and the jellied-chicken-salad-type-thing into a separate layer. This example has a fairly standard chicken, mayo, celery, and almond salad, but a lot of the recipes use canned soup in the chicken layer:

This version also suggests the celery more properly belongs in the cranberry sauce than in the chicken layer. 

Some recipes get fancy with the cranberry layer, adding in an orange, for instance. 

Others opt for crushed pineapple, because what '60s recipe couldn't be enhanced by a can of crushed pineapple?

If you're too lazy for the layering, though, there's a throw-it-all together recipe.

Salad Supper is essentially a horseradish cole slaw suspended in a lemon Jell-O, mayonnaise, and 7-Up concoction. The turkey and cranberry sauce are just supposed to be toppers, so this might be a good way to use up the very last of the leftovers since the recipe doesn't rely on them for the mold's volume.

And if you've only got leftover cranberry sauce, but the turkey is gone, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be left out from the meat-and-cranberry-Jell-O fun. Just crack open that can of crab meat you have in the pantry next to the cream of mushroom soup, and you can have Crab Mousse.

Just unmold the mousse onto slices of cranberry sauce, and you've got a memorable post-Thanksgiving meal.

I hope the imaginary mixing of gelatinized canned cream soups, leftover meat, and winter fruits is a festive start for your holiday season! You're welcome.