oh
(No, I knew it was gelatin.)
Another who attends Lutheran Church in Minnesota (Average age of congregation is 65, church established 120some years ago).
The usual smorgasbord foods are:
Faux chow mein (hamburger, rice, a cream of soup, chow mein noodles, celery, onions)
A variety of goulashes (elbow noodles, burger, spaghetti sauce, corn)
A few wild rice hot dishes
A few more hot dishes that can’t be catagorized
At least two versions of beans and weenies
Cole slaw (I bring that - home made dressing)
Two - three potato salads
A variety of pasta salads
Taco salad
My mom will make ONE Jell-O based “dessert”, just the Jell-O and Cool Whip on top
Cookies and bars.
Every once in a while there will be a stinky fish entree, but that happens maybe once every few years.
There is never anything in gelatin.
Luckily they quit having the lutefisk dinners 40 years ago. My mom hated it.
We live in my husband’s family home. After his mother died, he pretty much left the kitchen pantry as a museum. His mom never got rid of stuff either. I’ve been unearthing lots of items from bygone eras. Canned and bottled food, medicines, recipes.
I found cookbooks! A Good Housekeeping Cook Book from 1942. I see ‘jellied coffee souffle’ and ‘creamed string beans’. Ick. But most of the recipes are familiar.
A Butterick Cook Book from 1911. Haven’t been through that yet.
I had to look through the oldest. Mrs Rorer’s Philadelphia Cook Book. 1886. You couldn’t easily try some of these recipes anymore.
To pickle beef: To 50 lbs of meat allow one and a half ounces of saltpetre …
Saltpetre, that’s gunpowder right?
uh, just bumped into jellied veal. Lots of jellied deserts and savories in 1886.
We are really heavy on dairy, but not otherwise remarkable.
I hear more about odd Southern recipes involving things no one from the north has ever seen. But I have no idea whether this etends far back in time.
An aspic does not have to be made with Jell-O. Any brand of gelatin will suffice.
I love cream of mushroom soup, and tend to have it quite often. I add all sorts of spices to it.
Well, oddly enough creamed green beans is pretty good if made right. Not sure about jellied coffee souffle, but I would guess that you make essentially jello with cold coffee as the liquid [with or without the cream, but probably sugar] so what is the big difference [other than texture] from coffee icec ream or granita?
Saltpetre is a nitrate [or nitrite, cant rememebr which offhand] and is a preservative, it is an ingredient in gunpowder, but is related to the nitrites that preserve hotdogs and sausage…]
Sounds like you found a corning recipe for beef=) and it is the nitrites that keep that wicked pink color in the corned beef=)
I don’t think anyone is advocating using Jell-O in an aspic. In fact, quite the opposite. Does Jell-O make unflavored gelatin? And you don’t necessarily even need to add gelatin to an aspic. If you use lots of bones or pigs feet in your aspic, they provide enough gelatin to the final product to gel.
(Unless I’m being whooshed on the Jell-O thing.)
No. Saltpeter is used in the manufacture of gunpowder (along with carbon and sulfur), but it is not gunpowder. It’s potassium nitrate, commonly used in food preservation for hundreds and hundreds of years. It’s not used as much anymore, but it’s what keeps corned beef looking pink, for instance. You can corn a brisket without saltpeter, but it’ll turn gray/grayish-brown. You’ll also see it quite often in recipes for homemade cured sausages.
edit: Crap, just noticed I was beaten to the answer.
So creamed string beans still gets made. Wow. I don’t quite see it, but I guess you could cream most vegetables.
The coffee souffle has eggs, evaporated milk and cream - sounds a bit custardy. The texture matters to me. I can’t abide flan, or coffee ice cream, it’s a no go for me.
My mom made this once. IIRC (it was the 70’s) it was basically a coffee cheesecake, without the cheese. The topping was sweetened gelatinous instant coffee* which was pretty decent to my 12yo palette
- it may have been camp coffee
You guys need to go to France. They do all sorts of things in Aspic.
My husband’s father is from rural Ohio–his mother made all these dishes and more. My husband still prefers canned veggies to fresh or frozen and he’s 46. :eek:
My kids love to look at the “old time” Betty Crocker cookbook for kids that was mine when I was little–the silliest pics of not so good looking entrees… It’s fun (but I don’t cook from it).
I remember many years ago when the (then) bf was in culinary school. They did the whole aspic thing and it was repulsive. Salmon in aspic? Urp. But the school thought it was an important thing to learn - I cannot remember the last time I saw anything in aspic on a menu.
So, I’m guessing you’re familiar with what my mother calls “funeral sandwiches”, right? hehe
Lutefisk deserves a thread all its own. To many Minnesotans, it remains a Christmas tradition to eat some. I once heard someone say, “Well, when I was a kid, I didn’t like it, and I could only eat about a teaspoon. But now, I can eat a whole tablespoon.”
That’s probably it, although I’m pretty sure I saw it sold locally and spelled “szoltsa”. Then again, my memory is not what it was. It was the first time I met the guy and he was so eager to have me try it. Unfortunately, he didn’t describe what it was first, and what I thought I was seeing was pieces of meat in some sort of jellied fat. It was literally making me gag before I even tried it, and the vinegar didn’t help any.
Not exactly. Kraft Foods, which owns the Jell-O brand, has a cross-branding agreement with Knox unflavored gelatin. More here.
I started a thread once on the mushroom soup question. Ah, here 'tis.
I’ll take chicken in aspic over schmaltz on rye or chicken feet any day.
The 1975 Joy of Cooking has Liver Sausage Canapes, Anchovy Cheese, and boiled Porcupine.
It might be some local corruption of the word. The spelling you give is kind of half-Polish, half-English (“sz” is a common digraph in Polish [and Hungarian], but the “ts” sound would be represented as “c” in Polish.) But, yeah, if you had vinegar with it, you’re definitely describing the same foodstuff I referred to as galareta.