“America’s most well-known dessert” and the Politics of Place – Energetic Historical past

Michael Dawson

Since its creation in 1897, Jell-O has been synonymous with the USA. Early Jell-O dessert booklets featured George Washington’s visage.¹ American leisure icons starting from Jack Benny to Invoice Cosby have pitched it to customers. American astronauts shared it with their Russian counterparts on the Mir area station. And a number of other on-line commentators had been fast to counsel that Canadians boycott the wobbly stuff in response to Donald Trump’s tariff threats. Jell-O is clearly a permanent image of Americana.² And but its historical past is extra transnational and sophisticated than one would possibly assume. Certainly, Jell-O’s reception and significance has been formed not just by its nation of origin however by the place (and the way) it’s promoted and consumed.

Canada is a part of that story. We don’t know when the primary bundle of Jell-O made its manner right into a Canadian kitchen, however we do know that by 1905 a Jell-O department plant had been established in Bridgeburg, Ontario. A flurry of Canadian-based promotional materials adopted. For instance, the Jell-O Firm of Canada instantly tempted Canadians with a booklet providing “New Jell-O recipes” whereas a booklet titled Jell-O the Dainty Dessert championed Jell-O as a “Made in Canada” product.³ Certainly, by the mid-Twenties a product that had first been marketed as “America’s Most Well-known Dessert” was being marketed north of the border as “Canada’s Most Well-known Dessert.”

That the unique slogan was modified for a brand new atmosphere is important however not essentially stunning. Extra revealing is the extent to which the supporting photos inside this promotional materials had been edited to attraction to (or not less than not offend) Canadian sensibilities – particularly relating to the problem of race. Canada has a well-documented historical past of anti-black racism. But it surely additionally has a longtime sample of failing to return to phrases with that historical past by favourably contrasting its historical past of race relations with that of the USA. On the forefront of that selective mythology is a concentrate on American slavery and its legacies. Jell-O’s entrepreneurs seem to have been keenly conscious of this sample when, within the Twenties, they selected to recalibrate their promoting for the Canadian market.

Throughout the Twenties, Jell-O promoting in North America targeted on each the product’s comfort (the truth that it may very well be consumed nearly wherever) and its reference to idealized home settings. Each themes had been central to a 1922 “at dwelling in every single place” promoting marketing campaign in the USA and Canada. Booklets distributed in each international locations featured photos of individuals serving or consuming Jell-O in a collection of disparate settings: tenting within the woods, on a farm within the “wheat belt,” and in a snow-bound cabin. Certainly, each the American and Canadian variations of the booklet featured a bear and a cabin on the duvet. However the Canadian and American booklets differed on one key level. The American booklet included a plantation in its compilation of idealized Jell-O consuming places and featured an illustration of an African-American boy serving the dessert to a white girl on the “Large Home.” The Canadian model didn’t. When it got here to selling their product in Canada, Jell-O’s advertisers acknowledged that whereas some cultural allusions had been transferable, others weren’t. Jell-O may very well be each Canada’s and America’s “most well-known” dessert however the reference factors used to justify such claims required selectivity and political consciousness.⁴

Such insights had been necessary on condition that the Canadian gelatine market within the 20^th century was a crowded one. Jell-O might have been the dominant model when it got here to on the spot flavoured desserts, nevertheless it confronted competitors from different gelatine firms comparable to Knox, Royal, and Davis, that tended to concentrate on advertising their gelatine powders as cooking components. As these firms battled for business area their promoting campaigns tried to distinguish their merchandise. Knox, for example, shifted from an early concentrate on the purity of the calves’ hooves integrated into its product to concentrating on the theme of “gel-cookery” and its contribution to fashionable cooking. Royal gelatine responded to Jell-O’s use of celeb endorsements by securing the providers of Ginger Rogers – who was eager to persuade customers that Royal Desserts had been “as thrilling as a burst of applause.”⁵ Davis gelatine, however, went out of its approach to emphasize its recognition not simply in Canada however all through the British Empire.⁶

Certainly, “place” was central to this battle for client allegiance – and the strategies employed by these firms to handle issues about their merchandise’ components and origins.

Some copy writers labored diligently to search out the best steadiness between celebrating Jell-O’s international provide chain and reassuring Canadian customers about high quality management. Therefore, a booklet titled Jell-O Rhymes defined that Jell-O merchandise boasted sugar from Java, Cuba, and South America; tartartic acid from France and Italy; orange and lemon colors from Sicily and India; and chocolate from Brazil. The gelatine itself, nonetheless, got here from “our personal Empire.” All of those components, it was fast so as to add, had been “healthful” and “lovely” and “important…to the well-being of man.” And to take care of the purity of the product, they had been “assembled” in Jell-O’s “spotlessly clear, environment friendly, and charming” Canadian manufacturing unit by “immaculately garbed staff whose palms information the machines, however by no means contact the product.”⁷ Canadian-made Jell-O was without delay unique and native; worldly and acquainted; enjoyable and secure. And the Bridgeburg manufacturing unit was anticipated to play a key function in each assuaging Canadian customers’ issues about high quality and security and in forging a symbolic nationwide hyperlink with the Jell-O model.

Such claims mirrored the need of alleviating customers’ issues about Jell-O’s components and its standing as a dessert (and thus unhealthy) meals. A 1930 Jell-O booklet printed in Toronto, for instance, claimed that “Jell-O is without doubt one of the best meals in all of the world to digest” and highlighted its “pure fruit flavours” and “pure cane sugar.”⁸ That very same 12 months Basic Meals printed What you are able to do with Jell-O – a booklet that acknowledged the product’s core identification as a dessert however emphasised that it was shortly changing into an necessary ingredient in a broader vary of cooking and baking. It supplied an in depth “chemical evaluation” of Jell-O and estimates on the variety of energy consumed per serving.⁹ In truth, over time, gelatine desserts and merchandise had been reimagined as weight-loss aids. Knox appears to have been probably the most specific on this entrance and its promoting campaigns may hardly be accused of subtlety. Therefore, a 1939 booklet urged customers to “Be Match Not Fats!”¹⁰ whereas emphasizing its standing as a non-flavoured and sugar-free gelatine. Gelatine, from this angle, was a core ingredient not simply in sugary treats – however in a nutritious diet as nicely.

America’s “most well-known dessert” clearly grew to become a well-liked product and cooking ingredient in Canada. However the cultural politics of gelatine ensured that this was a sophisticated course of that featured firms competing for Canadian customers and, of necessity, addressing points starting from adulteration to nationwide identification and from race relations to wholesome consuming habits. Jell-O’s entry into the Canadian market undoubtedly replicated lots of the patterns seen in the USA however native components in Canada sometimes broke the mould (sorry) and required entrepreneurs to actively reply to Canadian client sensibilities. It behooves us (sorry once more) to look at these tensions. For they permit us to attach Jell-O’s historical past to the historical past of gelatine extra broadly and to acknowledge that whereas Jell-O was invented in the USA its historical past and significance just isn’t confined to developments inside that nation.

Michael Dawson is Professor of Historical past at St. Thomas College the place he teaches programs on Canadian historical past, the worldwide historical past of sport and tourism, Disney and World Historical past, and the comparative historical past of nationwide identification and in style tradition in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.