A few weeks ago I came across a recipe for something called “Christmas Bell Salad.” The process entailed cooking canned pears in melted cinnamon candy until the pears were red and cinnamon-flavored, and then serving the pears with dyed-green cream-cheese piped at the top to make the pear look like a bell.
I don’t usually get a lot of kicks mocking mid-century food, but I was amused and intrigued. People often send me recipes that sound weird, gross or ill-advised, but this blog has expanded my ideas about food so much that I am rarely fazed. What is it about “Christmas Bell Salad” that got to me?
I guess it just goes to show you that there’s always room for growth. I don’t get my baking chocolate or nuts from the baking aisle, so why would it be weird to use candy for its red coloring and cinnamon flavoring? A little imitation cinnamon goes a long way, after all. I certainly don’t have a bottle on hand.
More recently I found a similar concept in the 1948 “Favorite Recipes” cookbook compiled by the Naomi Circle of the Woman’s Society of Christian Service at the Marvin Memorial Methodist Church in Silver Spring. “Kris Kringle Salad” features apples cooked in a cinnamon candy syrup and served with avocado on lettuce. No dyed cream cheese is involved. I thought this sounded a little more interesting and appealing.
“Favorite Recipes” is one of many cookbooks I’ve acquired in an attempt to gather more recipes from the D.C. area. The Marvin Memorial Methodist Church is mentioned in a book called “A Larger Circuit: An Odyssey in Ministry” by William H. Jacobs. Jacobs makes it sound like the congregation was quite large and was comprised primarily of government employees.
Juanita Brown wedding announcement, Washington Evening Star, 1942
Juanita Louise Michael, it turns out, was the wife of Marion S. Michael, who was the Reverend of the Marvin Memorial Methodist Church at the time when this cookbook was printed. Rev. Michael served at Methodist churches throughout Maryland, and became district superintendent of the Baltimore and Washington conference of the United Methodist Church. He retired in 1976 and died in 1985.
Juanita was born in 1921 in Washington, DC to Gladys Brown and F. Charles Brown, an auditor from Illinois. The family lived at 4627 Alton Place in Northwest, a nice house near American University that appears to be still standing. In 1940, Marion was living about 10 blocks east at the church where his father was a Reverend, now Citizen Heights Church. The couple married in 1942.
In addition to this recipe, Juanita shared recipes for crumb cake, “Sugar and Spice Cookies,” bread and butter pickles, and “Surprise Griddle Cakes.” “Reverend ‘Mike'” did his part as well, contributing a recipe for bacon waffles.
Juanita died in 1996. The Michaels are buried in Calvert County with Marion’s family. They had three children.
Washington Post, 1937
Using cinnamon candy to flavor other desserts struck me as a depression-era “hack,” but in my research I found that it has been a common practice at least since the 1880s. Cinnamon candies were used to flavor cakes, gelatins and puddings, and were especially common in recipes where apples were involved: apple butter, apple pie, jam etc. A recipe nearly identical to “Kris Kringle Salad” appeared in the Nashville, Tennessee “Banner” in 1931.
I also found evidence suggesting that I should have used cinnamon imperials aka “red hots.” Although cinnamon drops and imperials already existed, the Ferrara candy companies branded “Red Hots” in the 1920s. One 1929 ad for a California grocer lists “Red Hots Cinnamon Candy,” stating that “the cook uses them for cake decoration. for coloring apples, etc.”
As for the dressing for “Kris Kringle Salad,” I basically fished through my cookbooks for a “French dressing” recipe that wouldn’t be too overbearing. Mine contained oil, vinegar, honey, mustard powder, salt, and paprika. To keep the red-and-green theme, I avoided recipes with ingredients that would make the dressing too orange.
I have to admit I was a little disappointed to find that the candy didn’t impart an overwhelmingly sweet flavor nor a ridiculous color to the apples… but that probably made for a more palatable result. The salad was okay but the effort of melting cinnamon discs was too annoying. Maybe all of this could have gone differently if I had used “Red Hots!”
This is why it’s probably for the best that I don’t seek out “weird” and funny recipes for this blog. On the plate, they often turn out to be not that weird and therefore not that funny. I’m simply in no position to gawk at what other people ate.
Recipe:
- 1.25 Cup water
- .5 Cup sugar
- .25 Cup red cinnamon candy
- 2 apple
- 1 avocado
- French dressing
“Make sirup of water, sugar, and cinnamon candies; add apples pared and cut in wedges; cook until just tender; chill. Alternate apple and avocado on lettuce and serve with French dressing. Serves 4.”
Recipe from “Favorite Recipes,” Marvin Memorial Methodist Church, 1948, Four Corners, Silver Spring
