[Sca-cooks] OOP request: Jellied salad???

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Gorgeous Muiredach:
>At 12:04 AM 1/22/2003, you wrote:
>>At 11:48 PM 1/21/03 -0500, you wrote:
>>>Ok, I need to find out what jellied salad is, so I can find the French
>>>equivalent.  Could anyone tell me what it is?  What's in it?  How you do it?
>>
>>I'll save Master A the trouble and jump up with "There's _always_ room for
>>Jell-o!"
>
>I guess "salade en aspic" may be the best bet...  Oh humm, disgusting
>either way ;-)

I only shout that out at theatrical screenings of the 1938 "The
Adventures of Robin Hood". Either that or "The Blob".

Yes, salade en aspic might be the way to go, but as Anne says, you
need to remember that salade en aspic is savory (and not that common,
anyway, I suspect), while the American jello salad is pretty much, by
definition, sweet. (Ee-ewll!) Or at least partially so.

On the other hand, the blurring may not be so simple as the idea that
Americans like things too sweet. Fruit salads such as Waldorf Salad,
for example, could conceivably be napped with a sweet dressing (in
some cases, containing Miracle Whip, which is a sweetened mayonnaise
variant, and a bit like English Salad Cream, I gather), probably
without getting too obscenely far from the original chef's intended
concept. Once you've gone that far, Lime Jello mold isn't too far
behind.

What about Tomato Surprise? (Which, in my understanding, involves a
hollowed tomato shell filled with a savory jellied salad, including,
in part, the innards of the original tomato.) Is there a European
precedent for that?

OB horror story: my father used to tell of an army cook with a
mission, to wit, the gustatory enlightenment of the poor sons of the
soil under his care. One day he labored under his masterpiece, Tomato
Surprise for something like 4000 soldiers. Apparently the most
charitable comment heard from the lucky diners was, "Whassamatter,
Sarge, th' cole slaw fell into th' Jello???"

Adamantius