I read decades-old cookbooks and food magazines when I can find them. Sure many of the recipes are dated and politically incorrect but that’s the beauty and charm of digging into the culinary past. All of them can, at minimum, show me a time capsule of eating history or at most yield a recipe ready to be rediscovered. Even if I have to update the ingredients and methods, the glimmer of an idea is worth looking back. For that matter, some modern food constructs could use some rewinding and oftentimes those old cooks have some great lessons from a time before the modern industrial complex got a hold of our food chain.
I also love finding recipes that are sure to make modern ‘foodies’ cringe. Haute cuisine has never been my thing and snobbish food sorts that preclude less flashy styles of cooking deserve every sous-vide grape and sea urchin tasting menu they get in NYC for $1000. I’ll take great apple pie or French countryside coq au vin any day. Of particular irritation to modern food media observers seem to be old successes that came from homespun creations inspired by the lifestyle magazines and commercial product placement test kitchens of the mid 20th Century. I think they’re so focused on being the next ‘new’ thing they want to ignore all that came before they had the recipe ears of the populous with slick social media and overpopulated food television schedules.
Of course food makes for some fairly strong memories even decades in the past. Like anything that can tickle a few senses simultaneously it lodges in our brains for better or worse. Everyone remembers the horrible bean and banana holiday casserole from 1983 that Aunt Edna attempted, bless her, while the perfect beach-side grilled fish had on a far flung vacation to some tropical oasis can be the stuff of legend that leads to decades of recreation attempts. One of my own constant retro food memories is for a dessert that I still recreate to this day despite it being a most horrific shade of pink.
My mum is a product of the era and still makes the recipe that I’m sure was instigated by the pineapple and non-dairy substitute manufacturers of the day. I suspect it was originally placed in the pages of Sunset magazine or similar as an advert or for a bit of kickback money but the popular success was real nonetheless. I don’t care how down market it is, it’s the taste of my childhood and I love it just as you likely crave your own family’s culinary history, subconsciously or not. It sounds wrong when you read the recipe. It looks even worse when you make it the first time. But when you taste it you’re at a hip dinner party in 1966 all over again. Post-atomic age chic for sure.
For those not living in America, “Jell-o” or “Jello” is the proprietary eponym of flavoured gelatin or “jelly” as most of the rest of the world names it. The company was formed around the turn of the century and had ups and downs of popularity throughout the 20th Century adding and deleting flavours, manufacturing new uses, and generally championing it as a convenience food that could adapt to any food fad of the day. They employed everything from celebrity endorsements to in-store demonstration salesmen to ramp up consumption amongst the rapidly expanding home cook market.
Yet jelly moulds were nothing new even then. They’d been around for decades earlier and the Victorians were nuts for strange wiggling domes and towers of culinary invention. They revelled in infusing them with the most exotic tastes they could muster, riots of layered colours, and even the most scandalous of rude shapes to shock and delight their guests. They were all the rage amongst the otherwise prudish moralities of the time and I suspect served as a subtle form of rebellion at the dinner table. Ever since, jelly moulds have become a reinvented craze every few dozen years that cycle through all manner of themes from familiar fruit flavours to savoury meat tastes to suspended salad vegetables that wobble.
When in the 1960s the American makers of Jello and Cool-whip – a then newly invented non-dairy whipped cream substitute aka “whipped topping” – got hold of the gelatin mould idea they saw a match made in retro culinary heaven. Weird it up a bit with exotic canned pineapple that had begun to make its way onto store shelves and they had themselves a fine marketing vehicle. With the variety of flavours of jelly available to the public it became an instant success. Every family put their twist on it, sometimes with disastrous creations that included the likes of chopped celery or mushy banana slices, and started to give it names of their own making like “ambrosia”, “dream cloud pudding”, or simply “jello surprise”.
The real surprise is that even after reading the oddball ingredient list, it actually tastes good. I eat it for the memories as much as the taste and update my version personally with real whipped cream instead of the fake original to the recipe. Using fresh pineapple blitzed in the food processor helps the taste along too although tinned pineapple can work nearly as well if that’s all you have available albeit with different results. Use any flavour jelly you wish but in our house cherry or raspberry were the norm – both of which make for one of the worst looking colours ever found on a food.
I set a batch of this outside briefly to cool the other day and my neighbour was so intrigued by the colour I had to give her a taste. She was less than willing at first having not been even a twinkle in anyone’s eye in the 1970s but after one spoonful demanded the recipe, simple as it may be. Hipster food types won’t be sharing this recipe anytime soon I’ll wager but your grandmother will love it if you bring her a bowl full of memories.
Retro Pineapple And Cream “Jello”
450 g peeled and cored fresh pineapple – or – 1 x 398 ml can of crushed pineapple with liquid
85 g flavoured jelly powder (aka. gelatin or “Jello”, any flavour but I suggest cherry)
300 ml 35% whipping cream
100 g (~1/2 cup) white sugar sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
250 g cottage cheese (non-fat is usable but much less interesting)
Yield: Four dessert servings – best made four hours or more ahead
If using fresh pineapple, pulse in a food processor until finely diced. Use both the flesh and juice.
In a two-quart or larger saucepan over low heat, add the pineapple and jelly powder stirring to mix well. Warm through to dissolve the jelly completely but do not boil. Remove from heat to cool for twenty minutes.
Whip the cream, sugar, and vanilla to stiff peaks by hand or in an upright mixer with whisk attachment.
Add the cottage cheese to the cooled pineapple mixture and stir well to combine. Fold in the whipped cream gently but thoroughly. Pour into four equal serving bowls and chill for at least four hours to set.
Serve to the astonished looks of your dinner guests who will laugh and complain about how low brow it is while simultaneously eating every spoonful.
