Spiced peach salad, 1962

I don't know what possessed me to try this except the idea of vinegar in Jell-O was more than I could picture without experiencing it


I decided to halve the recipe and do half as written and half with some tweaks.  It seems that Jell-O came in 3-ounce boxes in the 1960s so I went with those.  The original recipe used peaches in light syrup and regular white vinegar.  For the tweaked recipe, I went with peaches in fruit juice, black cherry gelatin, and white wine vinegar.  I didn't have a cinnamon stick or whole cloves so I used a pinch of ground cloves and about 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon.  And you can't get fresh cranberries in July here so frozen stood in (and I had to go to three stores to find even those!).


I don't have a ring mold, and since these were halved, I used two loaf pans.

The instructions weren't totally clear but I'm pretty sure this was meant to be layered.  I made it layered, at any rate.


Tweaked on the left, regular on the right.


These were pretty different.  I added sugar to both versions of the cherry gelatin but I wish I had omitted it from the black cherry--I was afraid the cranberries would make it too sour but instead it was really sweet, and I think the tartness would have been nice.  The white wine vinegar in the juice-packed peaches was nicely tangy (the regular vinegar in the syrup peaches was pretty much indiscernible).  Definitely reminiscent of a holiday condiment, but not in a bad way.

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