Taste of History is a new limited-run blog series exploring old-school recipes and food culture found in archival collections. This time we tackle an old classic: Jell-O!
No historic cooking series would truly be complete without at least one bizarre mid-century Jell-O combination, which is why this month, we decided to tackle Salmon in Lemon Jelly! This recipe is from Betty Welter’s personal cookbook. Elizabeth, or Betty, grew up in the South Peace in the early 20th Century. Among her many other projects, she worked to develop her own cookbook, which included this recipe.
Jell-O as we know it today comes from a surprisingly long history. Gelatin is a protein produced from collagen, which is extracted by boiling animal bones. The earliest evidence of people using gelatin include being used as a glue on burial accessories in ancient Egypt. The first examples of gelatin being used in Western food come from the 16th Century in France. Because it was so difficult, and time-consuming, to produce gelatin was considered a sign of wealth and status. In 1894 Charles Knox developed the first pre-granulated gelatin, making the process more similar to what we know today.
In 1897 Pearle B Wait began experimenting with adding fruit syrups to the gelatin. The resulting powder was 88% sugar and his wife named it, “Jell-O,” creating the dessert we all know today. Wait sold the trademark to his neighbour Orator Frank Woodward in 1899 for $450.00. Under Woodward’s marketing campaign, the product quickly grew in popularity, with sales reaching $1,000,000 in 1909.
Jell-O has come to be used in many different ways throughout the 20th Century, but few are as iconic as the molded salad which combines sweet jelly and a range of savoury fillings. In our case, lemon jello with salmon, egg, celery and peppers! In making this recipe I did make two small adjustments. First, rather than using 2 cups of boiling water, I used 1 cup of boiling water and 1 cup of cold water as instructed on modern Jello packets. Second, since I did not have any pimento peppers handy, I substituted them with roasted red bell peppers.
To be honest, the actual creation of this dish was very simple. Since I don’t have a Jello mold I combined them all in a glass dish and left it to set overnight. The difficulty came in the unmolding process. I think the salmon at the top broke up the jello too much, so it did not have the structural integrity needed and fell apart. While the presentation suffered the final product actually tasted alright. I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t expecting great results but I served it with mayonnaise as suggested. Overall, the salmon was the most powerful flavour. The celery and eggs helped balance it out, but I honestly could not taste much of the lemon Jello in the mix.
Overall, while I don’t think I would try this exact combination of flavours again, the molded salad was a lot of fun to make. I might need to add some more Jello options to my cooking repertoire!
