Most people probably have some idea of what a salad is: A mix of various raw vegetables, usually a base of greens, with extras like beets or cherry tomatoes. (And , if you're feeling it.) Alternatively, a salad can consist of some kind of cold food (as found in a or maybe a macaroni salad) tossed with a whole bunch of mayonnaise.
If you consult the handy Merriam-Webster dictionary, these are, indeed, two of the definitions you'll find. But at the end of the second definition, there's a little tidbit about all the salad fixings being suspended in jiggly gelatin. What, like Jell-O? Are we suspending little hot dogs in Jell-O molds like housewives in the '50s? Didn't we leave that in the middle of the 20th century where it belonged? Well, for the most part, yes, but that particular definition of a salad still lingers in places like the dictionary, along with a wiggly renaissance on social media.
Salad days: A history of mixing stuff in bowls Salads as we know them (potato salad, dandelion salad, fruit salad, etc.) have existed for centuries, but it wasn't until the 1900s when Jell-O salads became a thing. Gelatin had been used in cooking well before the 20th century — going back to medieval Europe, in fact — but it was considered a luxury.
Gathering gelatin from the bones of cattle was a tedious, time-consuming task, and nobody without an enormous staff of servants even bothered. The elite families of New York and the antebellum South would serve jelly as a flex (including T.