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Paradise Pudding
1 C chopped nut meats 12 marshmallows 12 Marachino cherries Mrs. Henry E. Gaddis. ¼ C sugar 6 macaroons 1 pkg. Lemon Jello 1 pt. boiling water Pour boiling water over lemon jello and whip when partly set. Fold in whipped cream, the cut fruit, marshmallows and sugar. Set in cold place to harden. Will serve eight. ½ box gelatine 2 C sugar Juice 2 lemons Ruby Williams.
A church-supper gelatin dessert of the 1920s-30s, built on lemon Jell-O whipped to a foam and loaded with nuts, marshmallows and cherries. Everything hinges on catching the gelatin at the right stage of set.
- The critical momentWhip the lemon gelatin when it is the consistency of raw egg white — thickened but not firm. Too soon and it stays liquid; too late and it breaks into rubbery lumps that will not aerate.
- Whipped cream is assumedThe method calls for folding in whipped cream although no quantity is listed. Something like half a pint of heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks, would suit a pint of gelatin base.
- Sugar quantityThe sugar in the ingredient list has lost its fraction and reads as a whole number of cups, which is far too much against a sweetened gelatin package. A quarter cup is the plausible amount; taste the base before folding.
- One package of Jell-OPeriod Jell-O packages were generally dissolved in a pint of boiling water, which matches the pint called for here, and a modern 3-ounce box makes roughly the same two cups of jelly. Use the whole pint as boiling water rather than splitting it with cold as modern box directions do.
- MacaroonsProbably the crisp almond macaroons of the era, though coconut macaroons were also common by this date; not French sandwich cookies. Crumble them coarsely; they soften into the pudding, so add them last if you want any texture left.
- MarshmallowsThe twelve marshmallows here are the large sort, not miniatures. Cut them up with wet scissors, or substitute roughly a cup to a cup and a quarter of miniatures.
- Setting and yield"A cold place" would have meant an icebox or a cold pantry; refrigerate it, and give it at least four hours, preferably overnight. The recipe states it will serve eight.
Fruit-and-marshmallow gelatin desserts filled the pudding chapters of American community cookbooks from roughly 1915 through the 1950s, and this contribution is a typical example: packaged lemon Jell-O, canned maraschino cherries, marshmallows and store macaroons, all assembled without heat beyond a kettle of boiling water. The name "paradise pudding" is older than this version — an English pudding of apples and breadcrumbs carried the name in the nineteenth century — and by the twentieth century it was also being used for whipped gelatin confections of this kind.