For example, a jello salad might have green from a lime-flavored gelatin, brown from nuts or pretzels, white from bits of cottage cheese, and red and orange from fruit cocktail.

Early gelatin-based precursors to the jello salad included fruit and wine jellies and decorative aspic dishes, which were made with commercial or homemade gelatin.

[4] Jello acted as an easy and cheap addition to more labor-intensive or expensive recipes during the Great Depression and World War II.

[3] They were seen as a marker of sophistication, elegance and status, indicating that a housewife had time to prepare jello molds and that her family could afford a refrigerator.

The rise of Julia Child and the popularization of French cooking in the United States made the jello salad appear less elegant, and dieting trends eventually turned against sugary food like Jell-O.