Maybe Not Delicious, Definitely Important
By Carol Pope
Thanks to Carol Pope for the below story on Rose Knox! OK be honest: do you have a favorite aspic, or, in American, Jell-O mold? —Katherine
Maybe Not Delicious, Definitely Important
By Carol Pope
I don’t have a double boiler, so I improvise with a large saucepan and metal mixing bowl. According to my copy of “Better Meals with Gel-Cookery,” (published in 1952), the mixture of scalded milk, egg yolks and gelatine should be thickening by now. I’m concerned. I’m not much in the kitchen and cooking milk might be above my pay grade.
After half an hour of constant stirring, I give up; in go the canned tuna fish, diced celery, mustard, and lemon juice. My stomach flips as I pour the whitish translucent concoction into the mold — it’s copper and shaped like a salmon. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to taste my creation after it's set (if it does). It smells just like it looks: Cursed. I may try to pawn it off to my cats, instead.
Insulting by today’s standards, this tuna fish aspic is a perfect tribute to one of the most influential people in food history: Rose Knox, goddess of gelatine.
Founded in 1889 by Charles B. Knox, the Knox Gelatine Company produced the first commercially-available granulated gelatine in the world. You might not know it by name, but you’ll probably recognize the box. You can find it in the baking aisle, above or below the Jell-O, more than likely collecting dust.
To cook with gelatine before Knox, you had to boil animal bones for hours to draw out their connective tissue — that’s the stuff that makes gelatine, gelatine. This posed a problem because, at the time, aspic was a staple in upper-crust cuisine (perhaps due to the painstaking process required to make it).
When Charles B. Knox died unexpectedly in 1908, his wife Rose took the helm at Knox Gelatine Company, and minds were blown. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, only 19 percent of women worked outside the home in 1900. And she was running an empire.
Rose was up for the challenge, and she was astute. At its start, the Knox Gelatine Company was successful but wasn’t necessarily a household name, and she knew that her company’s success hinged on appealing to the modern housewife. She wrote cookbooks and submitted recipes to newspapers. She marketed gelatine as a cheap and protein-packed way to transform leftovers into imaginative meals. Americans desperately needed ways to make their food stretch during the Great Depression and World War II, and Rose’s recipes helped to fill the gap. With her help, Knox Gelatine Company exploded in popularity.
Before aspic fell out of style in the ‘70s, your imagination was the only limit when it came to suspending matter in gelatine. Side-eye-inducing salads filled with vegetables, meat, fruit, fish, and cheese graced suburban dinner tables across the country.
Rose was also a forerunner in work reform and instituted groundbreaking changes in the Knox factory. She introduced a five-day workweek, granted her workers sick and vacation time and allowed all of her workers to use the front door, regardless of gender. In fact, her gumption and business prowess helped her become the first female director of the American Grocery Manufacturers’ Association in 1929.
Did my tuna abomination end up being a waste of food? Maybe. Was it a waste of time? Absolutely not. I’d like to think that, as I plugged my nose and took a bite, Rose was cheering me on somewhere from the everlasting aspic afterlife.
Chris Fleming is getting pretty famous and I’m getting tons of hits on his episode. It’s a fun one, enjoy!
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This newsletter is edited by Katherine Spiers, host of the podcast Smart Mouth.
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I applaud your willingness to aspic. You are a braver soul than I.