What we can Learn From Jell-O Salad

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What we can learn from Jell-O salad

May 12th, 2010 @ 6:46am

By Paul Nelson

SALT LAKE CITY -- Fry sauce, funeral potatoes and Jell-O salad; a researcher at the University of Utah says their appeal to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints says a lot about Mormons.

Tanner Humanities Center fellow Kate Holbrook will spend the next year looking into what Latter-day Saints eat and what they avoid.

Holbrook says the dishes Church members like say a lot about who they are. Her data goes back to before the turn of the 20th century.

"They were more likely to have whole wheat recipes, for example, in 20th-century Mormon cooking than they are in the rest of the country," Holbrook says.

She says Latter-day Saints were aware of the health benefits, but that is not the only reason why they ate so much whole wheat.

"They'll have whole wheat cookies. They'll have whole wheat muffins. They'll have whole wheat flour in cakes, because they were trying to rotate their food storage,"Holbrook explains.

This rotation in food storage also led Latter-day Saints to sometimes add powdered or evaporated milk into their recipes instead of fresh milk.

So, what does what people eat say about who they are? Holbrook says you can determine the values of a people by what they serve for dinner.

"You have values like frugality; values like sharing, generosity, taking care of the poor [and] building up stores to be self sufficient and secure," she says.

Take, for instance, the notorious green Jell-O salad. Holbrook says this particular dish shows a couple of different values among Latter-day Saints, including how social they can be, since it's a dish that's commonly taken to social gatherings.

"A lot of the things that have become popular in Mormon food ways are things that are things that will appeal to children as well as adult,"Holbrook says.

She also says this particular dish illustrates how frugal Mormons are (or cheap, depending on how you look at it). It gives the appearance of putting a lot of thought into the dish without putting in a lot of money.

E-mail: pnelson@ksl.com