Jell-O Salad Recipes | Taste of Home (2024)

FAQs

What happened to Jello salads? ›

Jello salad fell out of fashion in the 1960s and 70s. The rise of Julia Child and the popularization of French cooking in the United States made the jello salad appear less elegant, and dieting trends eventually turned against sugary food like Jell-O.

Dissolve red jello in 1 cup boiling water and stir in half the can of pineapple and all of the can of whole berry cranberry sauce. Spread in bottom of 9x13 glass dish and chill until partially set. Combine sour cream and cream cheese and spread over red jello layer.

Fresh fruits like strawberries, blueberries, bananas, kiwis, or peaches are great additions. Other fruits have enzymes in them that make them unsuitable for adding to jello.

Some fresh fruits prevent Jell-O and other types of gelatin from gelling. These are fruits that contain high levels of proteases. Proteases are enzymes that break chemical bonds in proteins, such as collagen in gelatin.

Jell-O shifted to single-serve cups and more convenient options as competition for snacks and desserts grew. Kraft in the early 2000's shifted the focus of Jell-O's advertising away from kids and toward adults. It pitched sugar-free Jell-O, for example, as a treat for Atkins dieters.

The problem was, the new processed substitutes couldn't be sold on taste alone, as Shapiro makes clear in her book Something From the Oven: They just weren't as good as the real thing. But American palates had been adjusting to industrial flavors for the entire 20th century.

Runny gelatin desserts may as well just be sugar soup, so first let's cover what you did wrong. Chances are you didn't follow the directions exactly, adding too much water or watery fruit (via Butter With A Side Of Bread). Jell-O also won't set if left on the counter; it needs to chill in your refrigerator.

(Until alomost set). Drain whatever kind of canned, or fresh fruit you have and just stir it around until it is all through the jello mixture. (It should be set enough not to sink to the bottom).

The enzymes in bromelain are inactivated once they have been heated to about 158° F (70° Celsius), so while fresh pineapple prevents Jell-O from gelling, gelatin made using canned pineapple (which was heated during the canning process) won't ruin the dessert.

Making jello in a plastic container is completely safe if you use BPA-free plastic containers like the plastic bowl from the Smarty Had a Party.

What not to add to Jell-O? ›

If you like making gelatin for dessert, the box often recommends not adding certain kinds of fruit, including pineapple, kiwi, mango, ginger root, papaya, figs or guava. People have a hard time getting the gelatin to solidify when they add these fruits.

In my experience, the best way to avoid it is to not pour the mixture into the dish/es until it is cooled to nearly room temperature and considerably thicker. While it's cooling, you can stir it periodically to prevent layering, and then it should set quickly enough that it won't separate.

But in the decades after World War II ended, the problems that JELL-O had initially solved went away. Cheap food items did not impress a wealth-building American society, and wartime staples became repellant. In the 1970s, JELL-O languished as a children's snack and hospital dessert.

Bromolain in pineapple, papain in papaya and actinidin in kiwi are all enzymes capable of breaking down proteins, hence the warning that these fruits cannot be used in Jell-O.

Why do hospitals serve so much Jell-O? There are a few reasons: Jell-O is easy to swallow and digest, making it suitable for patients who have difficulty eating solid foods or have digestive issues.

“Jell-O salads first became popular in the 1930s but reached their highest expression as part of the processed food school of cooking that sprang up after the war,” said Wyman. This was an era of packaged foods and TV dinners, and it was the golden age of gelatin desserts.