Note from Andrea: I’m super busy this week, plotting for Unwritten Histories’ two year anniversary (next week!). So today we have a special guest post from Kesia Kvill about the history of Jell-O, and her experience recreating a vintage Jell-O recipe. The results are hilarious and vaguely terrifying! Enjoy!
Kesia Kvill is a PhD Candidate at the University of Guelph. Her dissertation focusses on food control in Canada during the First World War and the relationship between government and women. She received her MA from the University of Calgary where she wrote about public dining and Western Canadian identity. Kesia’s research interests include food, cultural, rural, gender, domestic, and public history. She also maintains a personal food history research blog, Potatoes, Rhubarb, and Ox.
Over the past year I have been spending some of my time listening to old radio comedy programs. Television sitcoms have always been one of my favourite ways to relax and disconnect from my day-to-day life and old radio comedies have offered me a way to wind down and relax my brain with the added benefit of being more portable as I get ready for bed. Listening to these programs has made me very aware of how many jokes rely on a culture and context that is tied to the time of their creation. While some jokes are timeless and some can regain their humour with a bit of context, other jokes that rely on racial or gender-stereo types will (thankfully) never be funny again. Besides enjoying the simple and formulaic nature of the comedies, I have also enjoyed how the largely food product sponsored commercials of these old programs offer further insight into our cultural history. While I love listening to a variety of old radio comedies, I’ve found a particular fondness for the JELL-O sponsored programs of the Jack Benny Show and the radio predecessor to Lucille Ball’s I Love Lucy television show, My Favorite Husband. It was while I was listening to these programs that I heard the following ad:
Here’s a letter from Alberta, Canada written by a young wife who asks me not to mention her name but gives me full permission to read this experience of hers: ‘My husband came home the other day with a gelatin dessert not manufactured by the JELL-O Company. Being a dutiful wife, I mumbled something about having just purchased three packages of JELL-O and let the matter drop. But I knew that this was my opportunity to prove that I know food values and quality in purchasing. So I made the gelatin dessert my husband brought home and I also made JELL-O. JELL-O gave me a more richly flavoured, firmer dessert that set in half the time. And now friend, husband is thoroughly convinced that I know my business.’ Well, we’re grateful to you young lady for sending us that letter. It bears out what I’ve so often said, ‘That JELL-O’s fine, fresh fruit flavour is tops in taste. No other gelatin dessert can equal the famous extra rich fruit flavour of genuine JELL-O. But remember, there is only one JELL-O! So always be sure to ask for it by name. Look for the big red letters on the box! They spell JELL-O!’ [1]
Today, JELL-O is most associated with the Baby Boom era, particularly with its focus on convenience foods, and a bizarre obsession with gelatin “salads.” Of course, if you’ve spent any time on social media in the recent past, you’ve likely come across the latest generation of DIY projects, often in the form of a 60-second montage on Instagram, which often feature JELL-O in a starring role (particularly if you are making galaxy gummy bears!). But the history of JELL-O, and its relationship with domesticity, is much older.
First trademarked in 1897, JELL-O landed on grocery shelves in both the United States and Canada by the mid 1910s. Much of JELL-O’s early success was due to successful advertising campaigns, including commercials promoting their “six delicious flavours: strawberry, raspberry, cherry, orange, lemon, and lime,” and encouraging homemakers to “look for those big red letters on the box, they spell JELL-O, and JELL-O spells a treat!” [2]
Radio proved to be the ideal medium for advertising JELL-O. The company was quick to capitalize on the new media, appointing popular comedian Jack Benny as JELL-O’s official spokesman in 1934. (This is when they premiered their infamous jingle (J-E-L-L-O), written by the band leader on Benny’s program.) The show’s announcer, Don Wilson, took on the primary responsibility for promoting JELL-O, starting the program with a commercial like the one above and comically (and generally unrelatedly) fitting in a plug for the product mid-show. Occasionally the program would end or begin with a recipe commercial, though it is hard to determine if this was done consistently based on listening to surviving recordings.
Following a brief lull in the 1940s, when wartime rationing restricted JELL-O production, they reappeared on radio broadcasting in 1949 with My Favorite Husband. The advertising format was largely unchanged from the Benny era, including the (very) occasional mention of JELL-O within the scripted content, as well as a mid-program recipe commercial.[3] The recipes included on these commercials were typically fairly simple,[4] likely repeating recipes that would be available in one of the company recipe books which they had been producing since at least the early 1900s.[5]
But just as these commercials were selling JELL-O, so too were they selling a particular ideal of the mid-century homemaker directly into the homes of Canadians across the country. As a cheap form of in home entertainment, radio programming and advertising played a part not only in defining the gendered expectations of the era, but also in reinforcing the expectations of what a good American, and Canadian, housewife was like. They were part of a larger system of food and cultural imperialism. As Iacovetta and Korinek explain, Canadian nutrition experts were part of a larger post-war trend in North America that constructed the “discourse regarding dominant bourgeois definitions of Canadian ‘ways’ and ‘standards’.” This is quite evident when we turn a critical eye towards the messages embedded within the JELL-O commercials.
Even as early as the 1930s, JELL-O promoted itself as a quality and economical food choice for the discerning homemaker. It was not an accident that they sponsored content with a famously frugal millionaire Jack Benny. And this is particularly evident in the clip from the beginning of this post, where a homemaker from Alberta proves her good sense and taste to her husband by using JELL-O, rather than another brand.
By the My Favorite Husband era, these associations were firmly in place, as this clip makes clear:
Any budget gets a break when there’s JELL-O on the pantry shelf. And gay shimmering JELL-O doesn’t need any expensive treatment to make it look grand and glorious. It’s the easiest thing in the world to fix. And with a twist of the wrist you can dress it up fancy. For instance, mold the JELL-O in a shallow pan, when firm, cut it into sparkling little cubes or flake it up by putting it through a ricer. Then, serve in individual sherbet glasses, topped with sliced bananas and whipped cream. All six delicious JELL-O flavours are rich with locked in goodness; strawberry, raspberry, cherry, orange, lemon and lime. And all six lovely JELL-O colours are bright and gay as a rainbow. So, look for those big red letters on the box, they spell JELL-O, and JELL-O spells a treat. That name is a registered trademark of General Foods.[6]
This recipe commercial from a 1950 episode of My Favourite Husband clearly demonstrates what the savvy kitchen manager can gain by making JELL-O. Like the commercial from the 1937 episode of Jack Benny, this particular recipe stresses the economical appeal of JELL-O, but also highlights the simplicity of the product and its aesthetic appeal. Both commercials promote the product’s superior value and quality. JELL-O clearly addresses the concerns of the family cook and promotes their product as one that will fulfill the expectations of the entire family. JELL-O was the quick and economical choice that appealed to the tastes of the entire household, much like the women who prepared it. The commercials simultaneously conform to, confirm, and reinforce the expectations of an ideal housewife. What’s more, in comical and classic Ball fashion, her character, Liz Cooper, constantly gave in to her expensive tastes that conflicted with her husband’s insistence that she stay on budget. Any attempts by Liz to exercise autonomy went horribly (and hilariously) haywire, with husband George coming in to fix the damage and put Liz back in her place. As a budget-friendly and quick dessert, JELL-O would have fit well within the prevalent idea that the ideal modern Canadian kitchen manager, was frugal, efficient, and skilled.[7] Sponsored radio programming, alongside magazines like Chatelaine, were part of the “bourgeois image-makers” that pressured Old and New Canadian women to conform to the Anglo-Canadian ideal.[8]
With all this in mind I decided to test out my own kitchen management skills by giving the simple and economical JELL-O and banana recipe a try. I invited my friend Lisa, who hates JELL-O, to join me in testing out this recipe. Frankly, I had no idea that there were people who don’t like JELL-O until I went to university. If I could get Lisa to try, and like it, I figured I would have achieved peak housewife perfection. In the 1990s and 2000s, JELL-O maintained its reputation as an economical and versatile dessert, and I grew up loving it in various forms: my grandmother makes layered rainbow JELL-O squares, my mom creates delicious popsicles using JELL-O and KoolAid, and I frequently snacked on whatever red JELL-O was in my residence cafeteria all through my first year of university. Up to this point, my contribution to my family’s JELL-O recipe repertoire has been pouring cream over a bowl of it; it was time for me to create something more sophisticated with JELL-O.
For this recipe I used lemon JELL-O, as it is one of the original six flavours.
Lemon Jell-O ready for the fridge. I figured most people have Jell-O directions, so decided I didn’t need to show that part!
Part of why I wanted to try this recipe was to see what happens to JELL-O when it goes through a ricer.
Jell-O set and ready for the ricer!
I am still not sure what the point of it was as it basically re-liquefied the JELL-O, but it was entertaining!
The ricer!
(I have to be honest, JELL-O through a ricer looks a lot like snot and other various body excretions, and thus does not look nearly as appealing as the recipe suggested.) I am curious if perhaps a different flavour of JELL-O might set more solidly than the lemon JELL-O and thus have more appetizing and clearly riced look.
After putting the riced JELL-O into a bowl, I topped it with banana slices and a dollop of whipped cream.
Add the sliced bananas on top.
Surprisingly, Lisa actually tried and liked the dessert, largely because putting it through the ricer had changed the texture of the product. Overall, the dessert tasted not unlike Bananas Foster. Perhaps “dressing it up fancy” does make it more fun and appealing?
Topped with whipped cream. The texture of the Jell-O after going through the ricer is more like a pudding than a gelatin dessert. We decided it has a taste similar to Bananas Foster.
Special thanks to Kesia for this wonderful blog post! I don’t know about you, but that dessert looks terrifying to me. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this week’s blog post! If you did, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice. And don’t forget to check back on Friday for our monthly look at Upcoming Publications for the month of April 2018. See you then!
Notes
[1] “Buck Benny’s Mexican Adventure,” The Jack Benny Program, 17 January 1937, https://archive.org/details/JackBenny1.
[2] This was the typical end to the recipe commercials on the My Favourite Husband Program.
[3] Some of their programs ended with short (usually ridiculous) JELL-O themed and radio plays starring Lucille and the program announcer, the one found at the end of this transcript. Short JELL-O plays like these were also featured occasionally on the Jack Benny Program.
[4] Possibly to allow listeners to either remember the recipe more easily or write it down quickly, though I had to stop my recordings several times as I was taking the recipe down.
[5] This is a fun one, made in Canada, from 1905! https://archive.org/details/jellodaintydesse00brid
[6] “Liz and the Green Wig,” My Favorite Husband, 1950-01-20, https://archive.org/details/MyFavoriteHusband_866/Mfh1950-01-20072LizTheGreenWig.mp3.My emphasis.
[7] Franca Iacovetta and Valerie J. Korinek, “Jell-O Salads, One-Stop Shopping, and Maria: The Gender Politics of Food,” in Sisters or Strangers?: Immigrant, Ethnic and Racialized Women in Canadian History, 2nd ed., ed. Marlene Epp and Franca Iacovetta (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 441.
[8] Iacovetta and Korinek, “Jell-O Salads, One-Stop Shopping, and Maria,” 444.
Within a couple of years of the MY FAVORITE HUSBAND ad, Jell-O had an advertising campaign showing it done up grand and glorious…consumers…i.e. housewives, weren’t impressed because for the time and effort made to look like that, they could come up with something more impressive than a gelatin dessert.