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.

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