Gelatin
United States, Great Britain and Asia
Coffee jello at Durgin Park in Boston
Oh, poor misunderstood gelatin! Anything resembling gelatin has been given the name “jello” by Americans (“jelly” by the British), although Jell-O is actually a trademark of one brand of commercially available gelatin. Gelatin in its pure form is clear and practically tasteless; it is typically manufactured by boiling down the bones, connective tissues, organs and the hides of cattle, pigs and/or horses in order to extract the collagen (sounds tasty, doesn’t it?). Surely you remember as a kid when mom boiled that ham for a New England boiled dinner, popping the remains into the fridge – when that door swung open the next day, voila! – gelatin. Serving just the gelatin became popular way back in the late 1800s, although it required the aforementioned cooking down process or buying dried gelatin sheets and purifying and reconstituting them, which quite frankly was a pain in the gluteus maximus. Commercially available powdered gelatin made dessert preparation easier because of two men – Peter Cooper who patented the process of powdering gelatin, and Charles Knox who created and marketed a pre-granulated gelatin. Pearle Wait (who bought Peter Cooper’s patent) added flavoring to the powdered gelatin in 1897 and began marketing it as Jell-O; Knox became known for his unflavored variety. To this day Jell-O (which was manufactured by General Foods) and Knox are both Kraft Foods brands, with Jell-O so popular that the governor of Utah declared it to be the state snack (take that, Illinois, with your stinkin’ popcorn). Read the rest of this entry »
