The Midwest, the region encompassing the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin, is famous for its 'salads that don't look like salads,' a phrase which has become popular thanks to Amber Estenson Schwarzrock, the TikToker who has made the area's recipes known from her account @thatmidwesternmom. “Anything can be a salad if you try,” she says.
A typical salad from the American Midwest reads like this, according to America. The Cookbook, by Gabrielle Langholtz (Phaidon, 2017):
Marshmallows with mayonnaise, vanilla gelatin and cottage cheese or whipped cream with cola, as in this recipe from fellow American vintage cuisine tiktoker B. Dylan Hollis. The combinations, at first glance, seem like an acquired taste. They are part of recipes such as Watergate salad, a pistachio and canned pineapple pudding with maraschino cherries; or the apple and cheese pudding; the cookie one, with buttermilk, cream, mandarin oranges in syrup and, of course, crushed cookies; the one with salted pretzels, strawberry and strawberry jelly, and whipped cream, again; or one with Snicker's chocolate bars, peanut and chocolate, mixed with apples and whipped cream that, strangely, has the appearance of a Russian salad if you don't pay too much attention.
And the name 'salad', something confusing for the rest of us mortals who do not live in this area of the United States. However, they are considered as such due to the presence of something reminiscent of vegetables, be it fruit in syrup or the lemon flavor of gelatin, as well as the presence of salty condiments such as mayonnaise or cream cheese. .
These sweet salads are served at so-called potluck dinners, meetings in which each attendee brings a dish and arranges it on a common table from which the diners help themselves, be they celebrations or more dire occasions, such as the death of a loved one. .
Although today they may seem very vintage, they are still consumed after having lost the splendor of a time in which using molds and gelatins was a culinary milestone. After World War II, being able to offer a meal at home that showcased the technological developments of the industry was perceived as something elegant and attractive, and a status symbol, explains Adrienne Bitar in Diet and the Disease of the Civilization (Rutgers University Press, 2018).
The gradual introduction of dehydrated or canned and quick-preparation products, manufactured by companies such as General Mills or Pearl Mill under well-known brands such as Betty Crocker or Aunt Jemima, sought to facilitate the task of cooking for women who had strongly entered the paid labor market. since the end of the 19th century. “But it wasn't until the end of World War II that the food industry looked toward home cooking to imagine a day when the kitchen was on, the family smiled together, the mother wore a pretty apron, and all the food was frozen. . Or dehydrated. Or canned. Or prepared from what many women called ready-mix,” says Laura Shapiro in Something From the Oven (Penguin Books, 2004).
The food industry, with the technology necessary to develop more and more ready-to-cook products in a flash, was not asking whether women liked to cook more or less, but rather whether cooking was important, and the answer was no. “In the 1950s there was a turning point that had been set in motion half a century earlier, when women discovered canned soup and gelatin, and saw how they were wonderfully easy to prepare.”
However, this had a decisive impact on both American food and taste. “The limitations of the industry meant that the sensory qualities that could be achieved in these products were either very sweet or very salty or very bland. And the more of these qualities that were reflected in a family's meals, the more acceptable they would be."
Furthermore, leaving daily eating in the hands of others led to a change in the psychological relationship with preparing meals. Handling fresh food was considered a nuisance, a waste of time and, at times, could even generate repulsion. An attempt was made to distance the cook from the food so much, preventing him from having to apply his senses and reasoning to cook, that an unprecedented disconnection occurred between two parts that need each other. Thus, as Shapiro says in another of her books, Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (Harper Collins, 1986), “cooking without the senses, and without even exercising the mind, was going to have a considerable effect on how and what we eat.”
In short, the progressive rise of all these ideas would prepare the ground for the triumph of junk food, leading to a percentage of obesity in the United States that is today considered a public health epidemic. “It came to be believed that cooking was very difficult and time-consuming if precooked ingredients were not used to define the recipe and take the helm,” says Shapiro.
At the same time, another sector of the population was prepared to follow the legacy of home cooking that works with the seasons: Julia Child would appear for the first time on screen on February 11, 1963, in her program The French Chef, with which she dealt to imbue French gastronomy to Americans who had already emerged from the post-war period and were beginning to enjoy the country's economic rebirth.
