To refresh your memory, here is 187. Fillet Roll-Ups:
When I posted that earlier this week I did not include an Avocado & Grapefruit Mold, which was part of the menu. Card 187. did not include a recipe for the salad, so I was left to my own devices. When I googled “Avocado and Grapefruit Mold,” the results were few.
There was a reader-submitted recipe over at The Mid-Century Menu which called for lime Jell-O:
As well as Richard Nixon’s Avocado Salad which used lemon Jell-O:
But I decided to delve into my cookbook collection to find one. I was surprised to find multiple dishes in multiple cookbooks with this fruit (avocado is a fruit) combo! I eventually settled on the following from the Better Homes & Gardens Salad Book, published in 1958.
The recipe doesn’t sound too insane. I am always wary of gelatin and mayo in tandem, but the remaining ingredients somewhat make sense. Here we have avocado, jalapeno pepper, grapefruit, salt and lemon juice:
It’s basically a riff on guacamole!
But then you have to stir it into this semi-frozen lime-mayo mess.
Which results in this:
It doesn’t look at all appetizing–and its looks did not improve once released from the mold:
At least it unmolded in one piece and kept its shape!
But how was it?
Bad. It was truly bad.
It tasted like sweet guacamole.
With mayo.
Go home salad book, you’re drunk.
this is the 2nd time ive seen someone try this and in the last one said leave out the jello and just spread it on crackers …….
I am truly baffled by some of the gelatin “salads” of the mid-century menu. Someone needs to do a thesis on how and why people thought these would make good combinations of tasty food. I need answers! LOL
As someone who lived for years in South Korea, I have a theory. That is: if something is new or unusual, there are no rules. South Korea was not a sandwich culture. So, there are no rules that say ham, tuna, and strawberry jam aren’t meant to be together between two slices of bread. Nor is there are rule indicating garlic bread should not be sweet, but there IS a “rule” indicating an Americano cannot have milk (unless you’re at Starbucks, since that didn’t originate in South Korea). We’ve got the benefit of hindsight to recognize lime flavored gelatin and mayo mixed with avo and grapefruit is probably freaking nasty.
That makes sense. Especially since post-war era America was all about the future and modern innovation. I’m sure the novelty of more abundant and convenient shelf-stable foods fired up a lot of imaginations to come up with new and exciting recipes. Whether they worked or not is another matter. 🙂
The gelatin salads fr mid-last century seem wacky because home cooks combined leftovers with popular prefab foods in mod, space aged colors of the day, trying to emulate the intricacy of jellied molds wealthy Victorians once featured as centerpieces. *paraphrased fr article on Serious Eats website….
The fish un-molded beautifully!
I wish you could have seen my face while I was reading this.
HA!