From Fame to Shame: The Tottering Tale of Jell-O
From Fame to Shame: The Tottering Tale of Jell-O
Happy Eat Your Jell-O Day! (A few days late).
What is America’s Most Famous Dessert? If you guessed Jell-O (which you probably didn’t) at one point, you would’ve been right. The brand first touted itself as the country's most famous, then skillfully marketed the product until they were.
Today, younger generations have little to do with flavored gelatin except perhaps pairing it with cheap vodka for slurpable shots. For most Americans, the last they’ve had the quavery treat was either at a party or in a hospital, if they consumed it at all as adults. Once upon a time, however, Jell-O was a regular addition to the dinner table or a party spread, and cookbooks were stacked with innovative ways to use the inexpensive ingredient.
In the age of Instagramable food and access to culinary techniques and ingredients from around the globe, Jell-O recipes of the past have come to symbolize the discarded relics of an outdated cuisine. You can find examples of these…creative concoctions featured in The Gallery of Regrettable Foods. While a lime jello ring with olives and relish suspended inside and topped with mayonnaise-y tuna salad may seem disgusting to our modern palate, what was the world like when Jell-O was first introduced-and how did it become so popular?
To get to those daring, glaring red aspics and boldly flavored jello salads with floating vegetables, we must look back a little further than the 1950s. Gelatin is not a modern invention; people have been using it in the kitchen for hundreds of years, and it was hugely popular in the Middle Ages. Arab aspics made with fish are recorded as early as the 10th century, and recipes that include gelatin started peppering cookbooks in Europe in the 14th century.
The creation and consumption of most of these viscous delights were limited to the very wealthy at that time. The process required many days of labor and the remains of a slaughtered animal. The gelatin comes from the collagen in animal bones and hooves, and servants would toil to turn a carcass into a clear, gelatinous product. This would be transformed into savory aspics, often chilled in elaborate molds with ingredients like truffles suspended in artful designs to impress the nobility.
With industrialization, powdered gelatin became available but didn’t immediately become popular. The creation of Jell-O incorporated sugar and fruit flavors into the powdered gelatin, but the original patent was sold in 1899 for a mere $450 ($4,000 in today’s value).
The Jell-O brand worked to market its product as accessible to everyone, with the “a child can do it” banner touted on many labels. Americans at the time had an obsession with food not just as a function but as a display, the same as we see with our generation. By giving the average housewife the ability to replicate the complex tablescapes that only the very wealthy had access to, Jell-O came to represent democracy in the kitchen. They were so successful in making Jell-O a household staple that in America today, the word “jello” is used to describe any gelatin-based creation.
The image of molded gelatin went from laborious and costly to efficient and affordable. With the onset of the Great Depression, Jell-O became a staple. It was cheap, easy to make, and a way to make leftovers or food that was past its prime edible. Immigrants on their way to America were treated to Jell-O on the ride over, and their first gift when they arrived: a Jell-O mold. Here is your first taste of capitalism; enjoy “America’s Favorite Dessert.”
Then we get to the Golden Age of Jell-O. The Minute of Molds. Stable Salads. The 1950s and 60s saw the end of the age of household help and the beginning of the era of domestic sciences. With its bright colors and increasing flavors, Jell-O capitalized on the image of the America that Americans wanted: progressive, scientific, with a bountiful table supplied by a cheery housewife.
Diana Hubbell
Any woman can boil water, so even the worst cook can become a grand hostess in the world of aspics and molded salads. As America becomes more obsessed with science and technology, and glossy images of cleanliness and perfection are printed in every women’s magazine, the kitchen becomes more about innovation than gastronomy. Jell-O goes from “America’s favorite dessert” to an amalgamation of savory odds and ends suspended in fluorescent gel.
1968 marked the peak of Jell-O sales, but they declined steadily after that. Maybe because women were entering the workforce at a higher rate or maybe because these creations were actually disgusting, by 1987, sales of Jell-O were cut in half.
In the 1990s, the diet craze made sugar-free Jell-O options popular and premade Jell-O cups appeared in kids' lunch boxes, keeping the sparkling gelatin relevant to another generation. Bill Cosby had one of the most famous and long-standing celebrity partnerships with the brand, and “America’s Dad” pitched the product to kids for decades while he still had a wholesome reputation.
Sales of Jell-O have continued to drop, $371 million between 2009 and 2018, and what was once considered an elegant and essential part of a gathering has been relegated to a snack or a way to hide cheap liquor at college (or slightly post-college) parties. In Utah, however, the tradition of lime Jell-O salads is alive and well, and the state has even adopted Jell-O as the state snack.
Still, what goes down often comes back up, as we see with recycled fads coming back to haunt us. Just like low-waisted jeans and butterfly clips, aspics and jello recipes are starting to pop up all over the internet. Artists are finding incredible ways to use gelatin, like Bompas & Parr, who had participants make and eat jello masks of their partners in an experience called “eat your face.”
Food historian Ken Albala has earned the moniker “Jiggle Daddy” for his experiments in aspics. He recently released a book on the subject, The Great Gelatin Revival, which has such modern adaptations as a martini jello with bacon, lettuce, and tomato suspended in it-a complete lunch.
Adventures in Jelly showcases vintage jello molds used to create more modern motifs and unexpected additions, such as a fluorescent gin and tonic. Jello is finding a modern audience as a surprising art medium and may make its way to the cookbooks once again.
So whether or not you enjoy a Jell-O cup today, or wince at memories of a ghastly Jell-O salad or too many Jell-O shots on the Fourth of July, keep an eye out for where jello may show up next.
Yum Yum
Jelly on a plate, jelly on a plate
Wibble wobble, wibble wobble, jelly on a plate
Jelly on a plate, jelly on a plate
Wibble wobble, wibble wobble, jelly on a plate, whoo
The Wiggles, “Jelly On A Plate”
