this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2026
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What?
It's an interesting bit of American history, actually.
During WWII there was a small revolution in food preservation technology to keep the army properly fed. Then when the war ended, a lot of those highly processed foods started to make their way to the grocery stores and onto pantry shelves.
The problem was that because a lot of these ingredients were new, no one really knew what to do with them. This led to a lot of absolutely heinous recipes being shared in magazines.
These recipes usually took the form of sweet and savory jello-based salads
For reference
For more hideous context… there’s things like this, too:
And this:
That actually looks tasty. Would actually try it out.
If clear jello is used, the taste is often fine, as it almost has no flavor
The problem is the absolute horrifying texture that food in jello has
What would that be? If it's anything like preserved eels I'm so down.
You might actually be the target audience for this. I hear preserved eels and I imagine the most disgusting texture of me life, to be fair, I live a a 3 day drive from the closest ocean, so I never got much of a taste for a lot of seafood.
That’s what everyone says when you ask about a food you haven’t tried before. “Oh, it tastes just like ~~chicken~~ preserved eels.”
What helped is that gelatine pre-industrial food processing was very hard to make and prohibitively expensive. Hence it a was only for the very rich.
Like with grass lawns, when they became attainable for the middle class people jumped on those, because regardless if it's actually good it showed your status as recently affluent.
This is why they became a staple, only the lawn stuck, though.
I've made gelatin over a wood fire once. From animal parts. It was for historical reenactment purposes, and I can confirm, I never ever want to do that again. I can't imagine doing it in my own home, especially not without the benefit of a modern fume hood.
I would at least try it, looks nice!
If i were served that, my manners would require that I take a small portion and try it, but then to feign some excuse to not finish that. it's only polite, right?
Is that meat on the jello?
You do realize the jello is melted Collagen right? It's in its natural habitat. There's meat on those bones again.
You can zoom in the image to read the recipe.
It's "seafood salad" so I guess it's pure canned tuna. It's also the least disgusting part of it.
I'm pretty sure that's going to be fire. Dinner and dessert all in one!
How, eh, high are you?
Hi! How are you?
High, how hi are you?
Not much dawg. What’s up with you?
Ah, you know. Getting there.
Aw man, I'm too high for this.