If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving in the South, more than likely the salad served up as a side dish will have a little jiggle to it.
Congealed salads are a Deep South tradition. It’s almost impossible not to see a variety of the salad at holiday potlucks and get-togethers.
With Thanksgiving this week and Christmas right around the corner, you might even call this time of year congealed salad season.
“I think it is very nostalgic to see that on a holiday table,” said Lee Ann Flemming, cookbook author and food columnist.
Congealed salads come in a variety of styles. Some are all gelled together and include some type of cream base — sour cream, cottage cheese, cream cheese, whipped topping — and usually take on a pastel color.
Congealed salads will be served up at many Thanksgiving meals this year. The side dish remains a popular one in the South.
The ones with pieces of fruit, nuts and occasionally veggies visibly floating inside are sometimes considered fruit or Jell-O salads. Those are usually decorated with a dollop of whipped topping. Others made with marshmallows and nuts take on the texture of an ambrosia — the food of the gods in Greek mythology that was often depicted as conferring longevity or immortality upon whoever consumed it.
“Really all you need is imagination,” said Flemming. “You can do as little or as much as you want. The sky’s the limit.”
Then, there’s the tomato aspic, a rare savory congealed side dish.
“I love tomato aspic,” said Flemming. “I think it’s one of those things that you either like or you don’t. It’s an acquired taste. You just don’t see it served a lot.”
Flemming said a tomato aspic is usually served in place of salad and has a strong, robust taste.
“It’s more of a heavy salad,” she said. “It has a very bold flavor.”
Like fruit congealed salads, tomato aspics can feature an assortment of vegetables, sometimes cream cheese or shrimp inside the molded gelatin.
There’s no doubting the proper place for an aspic at the dinner table. No matter how sweet a congealed salad might be, however, it’s never going to be served on the dessert table.
“They are at the meal table, and you see them a lot at church potlucks,” said Flemming. “My momma had to serve it on a leaf of lettuce. You didn’t just serve it naked on a plate. You had to put it on lettuce.”
Congealed salads became staples in American households in the 1930s to the point that “about one-third of all cookbook recipes of the time were gelatin based,” according to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. The rise of congealed salads seemed to peak in the 1960s and 1970s. Pieces of vegetables, meats, fruit, marshmallows and cheese were mixed together to create molded dishes, sometimes even as a main course rather than a side.
Cookbooks from the 1980s, like this one, are full of congealed salad recipes.
When Flemming served as food stylist during the production of Academy Award-winning movie “The Help,” which was filmed in Greenwood and set during the 1960s in Jackson, she made numerous congealed salads.
“For every scene that called for a congealed salad, I had to have five more in the wings,” said Flemming.
The movie includes several scenes featuring the side dish, including every bridge club luncheon, the DAR luncheon and the final scene of the food on the huge round table that Celia prepared for Minny.
“I had to provide a different salad and color for every scene to accompany the rest of the menu,” she said.
Although the popularity of congealed salads tapered off nationwide a few decades ago, the side dish remains a staple during holidays in the South.
“It’s just a Southern thing — a cultural thing with us,” said Flemming. “I guarantee you my mother right now has one in her refrigerator.”
Greenwood resident Beth Barnes, who is a New Jersey native, said congealed salads were new to her when she first came to the South.
“I had no idea what they were before I moved to Mississippi,” she said. “I thought any salad like that was a dessert. I didn’t know why it was being served next to savory dinner stuff. I was very confused.”
Barnes soon began to notice at her church that when women of the Sunshine Committee, which provides food for funeral luncheons, signed up to make a salad, it was not going to consist of leafy greens but rather congealed fruits and nuts.
“You have chicken, mac and cheese and congealed salad as the set menu,” she said. “For a long time, I didn’t know what they were.”
She later learned, “If you’re doing something fancy, there must be congealed salads.”
In the first Southern cookbook Barnes ever received, there’s a recipe for a congealed salad. She’s yet to tackle the side dish herself but continues to enjoy the Southern tradition.
“I think there’s a lot of family memories around having it,” she said. “It’s one of those deep traditions that is so fascinating to me.”
For many, the gelatin salads do bring back memories.
Greenwood chef Lauren Smith said congealed salads remind her of her grandmother, Valerie Reifers.
“She had a catering business in Greenwood several years ago. She was most famous for her yeast rolls, and everything she cooked was delicious,” she said. “She made everything, even congealed salads, pear salads, English pea salads — the types of food most 10-year-old kids, like myself at the time, wouldn’t touch.”
Smith said one of her most prized possessions to this day is her book of recipes that were all handed down to her. In it, she has her grandmother’s recipe for congealed lime salad.
“That’s one recipe that I have yet to try to make for myself,” she said. “My mom and aunts are still taking care of the congealed parts of holiday gatherings.”
Here are some congealed salad recipes submitted by Greenwood-area residents to try out this holiday season:
GRANNY'S CONGEALED LIME SALAD
1 package lemon Jell-O
1 package Lime Jell-O
2 cups hot water
1 can crushed pineapple
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
8 ounces cool whip
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)
Mix Jell-O and hot water. Add pineapple with its juice, cream cheese, cool whip and chopped pecans, if using. Place in refrigerator to set. (Make the day before serving to allow time to set.)
— Lauren Smith
CRANBERRY CONGEALED SALAD
1 small can crushed pineapple
1 can whole berry cranberry sauce
1 cup broken pecans
1 large box of cherry Jell-O
3/4 cup sugar
Boil 2½ cups of water. Add to combined Jell-O and sugar in a big bowl. Stir and add rest of ingredients. Pour in a rectangular Pyrex dish. Cover tightly with Saran wrap and put in refrigerator overnight.
— Joan Nored
FROZEN PISTACHIO CONGEALED SALAD
1 (4-ounce) package instant pistachio pudding
1 (15½-ounce) can crushed pineapple
1 (8-ounce) container whipped topping
Stir instant pudding and pineapple together, and fold in whipped topping. Pour into shallow pan and freeze. To serve, cut into squares.
— Nancy and Susan Ehret (The recipe is not a family original but from the old Redbud Bed and Breakfast Inn in Kosciusko, which is no longer open.)
PINK VELVET FROZEN SALAD
1 can cherry pie filling
1 can crushed pineapple, drained
1 (14-ounce) can condensed milk
2 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pure almond extract
¾ cup chopped pecans
9 ounces Cool Whip
Mix all ingredients except Cool Whip thoroughly. Fold in Cool Whip. Line a loaf pan with foil paper. Pour mixture into pan and freeze. When frozen solid, lift out of pan and wrap again for storage in freezer.
— Vicki Pittman
PINEAPPLE CREAM CHEESE CONGEALED SALAD
1 large can crushed pineapple in its on juice
½ cup sugar
1 package unflavored gelatin (Knox)
1 large block of cream cheese
½-1 cup of pecan pieces
1 cup of Cool Whip
Boil a can of pineapple with sugar for five minutes to dissolve sugar. Then break up and add cream cheese to mixture. Add unflavored gelatin that has been mixed with ¼ cup cold water to thicken. Then add Cool Whip and pecans if desired. Put in refrigerator for several hours to set.
Cut in squares to serve. Garnish with mint leaves to serve.
— Janice Ford
TOMATO ASPIC
1 large can V-8 juice
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
½ cup pimiento-stuffed olives, chopped
1/3 cup finely chopped celery
¼ cup chopped green onion
1 can artichoke hearts, drained and sliced
4 packages plain gelatin
Dissolve gelatin in simmering V-8 juice, salt, lemon juice and Worcestershire; stir slowly until dissolved. Pour over olives, onion, celery and artichokes that have been placed in an oblong baking dish that has been sprayed with cooking spray. Chill overnight and cut into squares and serve on lettuce leaves that have been topped with a dollop of mayonnaise. (For something special, add boiled shrimp to the vegetable mixture.)
— Lee Ann Flemming
CHRISTMAS CONGEALED SALAD
1 (12-ounce) cherry flavored gelatin
1 package plain gelatin
4 cups boiling water
2 cups crushed pineapple, undrained
2 cans cherry pie filling
2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese
2 cups sour cream
1 cup sugar
Chopped pecans
Dissolve gelatin in boiling water, stirring until gelatins dissolve, and let cool. Stir in pineapple and cherry pie filling. Pour into a 9-by-12-inch baking dish, and chill until firm. Combine cream cheese, sour cream and sugar into a bowl. Stir well, and spread over congealed mixture. Sprinkle with chopped pecans.
— Lee Ann Flemming
LIME SALAD
1 package lime Jell-O
1 package lemon Jell-O
No. 2 can crushed pineapple, with its juice
1 cup chopped nuts
1 pint cottage cheese
1 can Eagle Brand milk
1 cup mayonnaise
¼ cup horseradish
Dissolve Jell-O in a cup of pineapple juice. Add other ingredients. Congeal.
— Beth Stuckey
MANDARIN-ORANGE SALAD
3 boxes of orange Jell-O
2½ cups boiling water
3 cans mandarin oranges
1 pint orange sherbet
Drain oranges and reserve 1½ cups of liquid. Dissolve Jell-O in boiling water. Add sherbet, oranges and juice. Let sherbet dissolve. Refrigerate.
— Claudia Henson
• Contact Ruthie Robison at 581-7233 or rrobison@gwcommonwealth.com.
