Spring is almost here! And I immediately started thinking of all the gelatin things I am going to make this spring and summer. While sifting through the archives to remind myself of what we’ve made already, I came across this doozy of a recipe that originally posted during our gelatin contest and I knew I had to reshare it. Enjoy!
Want to see something scary?
Behold! Jellied cottage cheese and tomato sauce served over coleslaw! It looks…horrible. Like a melting monster face with a green pepper tongue. Appetizing, huh?
AuthorRetroRuth
From Woman's Day Kitchen, June 1948
Tested Recipe!
[cooked-sharing]
Soak gelatin in cold water; add boiling water and stir until dissolved. Add salt, onion, and vinegar. Add 3 tablespoons of this gelatin liquid to cottage cheese.
To remaining gelatin liquid, add tomato sauce. Pour half of tomato mixture into a lightly oiled mold; chill until set (Keep cottage cheese and remaining tomato mixture at room temperature.) and top with cottage cheese mixture. Chill until set and cover with the remaining tomato mixture.
To serve, unmold on slaw; garnish with pepper.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
Directions
Soak gelatin in cold water; add boiling water and stir until dissolved. Add salt, onion, and vinegar. Add 3 tablespoons of this gelatin liquid to cottage cheese.
To remaining gelatin liquid, add tomato sauce. Pour half of tomato mixture into a lightly oiled mold; chill until set (Keep cottage cheese and remaining tomato mixture at room temperature.) and top with cottage cheese mixture. Chill until set and cover with the remaining tomato mixture.
To serve, unmold on slaw; garnish with pepper.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Notes
This recipe was sent in by Rachel for our gelatin contest, and she was nice enough to send with it a picture.
But no matter how nice it looks in the picture, its still made with cottage cheese and tomato sauce.
Not that I have anything against those things, separately.
In fact, I love cottage cheese. I was actually excited about this one. I love cottage cheese, tomato sauce AND coleslaw. Having them all together in one dinner sounded like a great idea to me. Tom, on the other hand, not such a big fan.
“Oh God, cottage cheese?”
“Yep.”
“So, what is it going to be like, lime gelatin, cottage cheese and fruit?”
“Nope.”
“Oh. So are we going to spoon it over the top or something?”
“Nope. There is a layer of unflavored gelatin with just cottage cheese in it.”
“Oh God. Wait…what’s the other layer?”
“Tomato sauce.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“There is an onion in it, too.”
“God.”
The layer of tomato sauce!
Aaaaaand…the “finished” product. Not sure what exactly happened here. Maybe the cottage cheese in the picture was creamier than the one I used. Maybe the mold they used was a little smaller. Maybe they greased their mold instead of unmolding it with hot water. In any case, this is what we had to work with.
“Uck.”
“What?”
“It looks like it’s bleeding.”
“Ew. It kind of does, doesn’t it?”
We just stared at it for a bit, then I clapped my hands together.
“Well, eat up!”
“Oh.”
“Bad, huh?”
“This does not taste good at all. And the texture is gross.”
The Verdict: Gross
From the Tasting Notes:
While Tom has never been a big fan of tomato and cottage cheese, I like both of these things. And even to me the taste was…less than good. Not exactly sure what the problem was, maybe the grated onion, but the flavors just didn’t go together. And the texture WAS gross. The jellied cottage cheese layer tasted exactly like what it was; jellied cottage cheese. Besides the fact that this thing turned out really, really ugly, the flavor made it an all-around bad recipe. It would have been way easier and much more tasty to just spoon cottage cheese into hollowed out tomatoes and serve those over coleslaw.
Oh, my. That looks and sounds REVOLTING!
I did like looking at the original recipe. This awful mess is just one element of a complete balanced meal! (Years ago (I don’t know if they still do it) Womans Day magazine used to print out a monthly menu, like a calendar page, listing things to cook or buy and serve. For some reason, this interested me inordinately! )
It looks like it would skitter over and bite you if you turned your back.
Once again Tom gets the award for best expressions. Ha! I love the grosser the recipe just to see his face.
Thank you for being brave and making/tasting this recipe. Now we don’t have to!
I am looking for ways to be more frugal in the home and using jello as a binder is actually a decent idea our fore-mothers had for using odds and ends up. I will ponder this. I have some unflavored jello in the cupboard…
Menu looks like it was designed for Lent–no meat.
I have four gelatin recipes that I do every summer: a 1940s aspic, my version of Perfection Salad, Tinkerbelle’s Salad, and a truly weird one from a 1949 A&P ad that has a lot going on, including lime gelatin and tuna. the first two I make over and over, alternating weeks because I love them so much. The Tinkerbelle one (adapted for low-carb) is OK, but not as big a favorite as the others. And the 1949 one I do only once because no one but I will touch it and I get sick of it before it’s gone. The aspic and the Perfection call for unflavored gelatin, and are very easy to assemble. I use sugar-free lime gelatin in the other two.
I’m pretty sure I would’ve tried that aspic/cottage cheese one, but maybe I should just stick to my own recipe and serve it with cottage cheese.
It’s recipes like this that keep me from experimenting with some of my retro books and booklets.
Please, what is ‘Tinkerbelle’s Salad’?
Lassie, Tinkerbelle’s Salad is a concoction of lime Jello, shredded cabbage, crushed pineapple, mayonnaise, and chopped pecans. It is surprisingly good. I “low-carb it up” with sugar-free gelatin, less fruit, homemade sugar-free mayo, but I keep the cabbage and nuts as the recipe directs. If you’d like the recipe, let me know. I stumbled upon it on the internet once, though, so you may be able to locate it that way.
I’ve had that, and it is indeed tasty, but I don’t remember cabbage in it. I should make some for Easter tomorrow!