Described as a “Dazzling, delicious rainbow of fresh vegetables at you dinner table,” the Vegetable Trio come from The Joys of Jell-O Gelatin Dessert, published in 1962. This little cookbook was in circulation at the height of Jell-O’s commercial success and it’s filled with all kinds of “dazzling” vegetable salads.
Yes, those are shrimps.
Apparently, when my mother was young, my grandmother made a lime Jell-O, carrot, and cabbage mold every Thanksgiving. My grandma was the only one that ate it, so no one could figure out why she made it every single year. I think my grandmother was under the same strange hypnotist’s spell that Jell-O somehow manged to cast over all mid-20th century housewives.
Today, we take my grandmother’s recipe up a notch with the Vegetable Trio: lemon Jell-o, carrots, cabbage, and spinach in three glorious layers.
There’s something very satisfying about layering Jell-O: you get to watch chemistry in action and get a very pretty result. Lovely to look at–but how did the Trio taste? About how you’d imagine raw vegetables in lemon Jell-O would taste. In fact, we were all puzzled by the result of this recipe: “I don’t understand how they wanted this to taste?” “Was this the intent of the recipe?” “Raw vegetables in Jell-O is really unappealing.”
I don’t why I had this wild hope that dishes like the Trio would be a revelation; a long-lost exploration in mind-blowing flavor. I thought these Jell-O recipes were just waiting to be dusted off and reintroduced to a new, enthusiastic audience. I always thought: “If they tasted so bad, why would they have been so popular?” I really don’t get it.
Tomorrow, we end on a high note.
My grandmother used to make a jello with shredded celery in it every summer (1970’s and 80’s). Blech! Only she and my Dad ate it.
At family functions, I experienced Jello combined with only predictable fruits. The results were inoffensive, but I probably would have been just as happy without solid objects suspended in my Jello.
The vegetable trio sounds a lot like perfection salad:
http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,2313,154176-232200,00.html
I’ve been obsessed with perfection salad since rereading the “high school” books of the Betsy~Tacy series. I’m kind of glad you did a test run before I went ahead and made my own perfection salad. I’m still going to make myself eat it though.
Yours looks really pretty.
If you make and eat perfection salad, send photos! and a description! I’ll post it here!
My adult son and I spent three weeks at my parents’ about ten years ago while my father recovered from an illness. We carefully rationed my mother’s copy of The Joys of Jell-O, and read a few pages each evening. We decided that the last line of each recipe should read “and throw it all away.”
HA! I enjoyed that.