When I read through the New Many Feature Cook Book (Aluminum Goods Mfg. Co., 1939), I immediately thought of my annual Pride month post with a rainbow of gelatins. This book has a LOT of gelatin-based salads! I mean, a LOT. The problem is, though, that they tend to be of very mixed-up and indeterminate colors-- not so much a rainbow as... Let's be generous and call it a kaleidoscope. But hey, a kaleidoscope might be a pretty good image for Pride Month too, as it still has a rainbow of colors. Their order is just more random--and as more and more queer identities are being celebrated, more people realize there are little pops of queerness everywhere. So here are some colorful gelatin salads that might not quite fit the rainbow stripe pattern, but I hope you'll go with me on this one anyway!
For an example of the myriad of colors in one recipe, Ham Stuffed Tomatoes uses lemon (yellow!) gelatin and not only mixes it up with pink ham and green olives, but then...
...hides it inside (presumably red) tomatoes or green peppers.
You might expect the Pineapple Salad to be yellow.
Even if it didn't call for green food coloring, though, the shredded olives and pickles would still make it rather green.
The recipes often feature plain gelatin, so that can make the color a bit indeterminate. Jellied Asparagus Salad, is more likely to just be kind of whitish with olive green bits than fully green.
So.... Camo kaleidoscope?
Then there's a pink-yellow-red-green combo in the Tuna Fish (pink!) and Cucumber (green!) Jelly...
...with more pineapple (yellow!) because it was apparently required for at least half of all vintage gelatin salads, plus pops of red pimiento.
The Salmon-Pineapple-Green Pepper Ring mostly follows the same color scheme.
It just jettisons the red.
The Spaghetti Salad sticks with the red/ yellow/ green scheme.
The cream cheese cubes and pasta might hide the red of the pepper and apple, the yellow of the egg yolks, and the green of the celery and dill pickles, but they will show up in little pops, like beads in a kaleidoscope or Enbies in a world of pink and blue.
And something that we might expect to be yellow-ish, like a Ginger Ale Salad with pineapple...
Well, it might be yellow if the Royal Ann cherries are at the yellower end of the spectrum, and if the apples are Golden Delicious, and if the celery is from the heart, but it is more likely to be yellowish (from the ginger ale gelatin) but loaded with Christmassy red and green. (So... I know everyone will hate me for this one, and the range of reasons could be quite wide, but... Piss Christmas?)
And on that note, I am OUT! (Well, I mean, the person who plays Poppy has been out for years, but I just mean the post is over.) Happy Pride Month!
Sugar and asparagus? Cutting macaroni into fine circles? Were the women who wrote this foragers? Like did they go out looking for mushrooms and pick a few of the "fun" ones to eat before writing these recipes? It seems like you would have to be high on something for any of this to seem like a good idea. Then again, you can't make much of a cookbook with the instructions to choose your favorite flavor of gelatin and throw everything that is about ready to be thrown out into it. Then pour it into a mold and serve it to your thankless family (or catty women's group/church potluck).
ReplyDeleteI'm convinced that some of these old recipes were just attempts to get treated to restaurant meals and nights off cooking duty more often.
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