Jones-Minsinger gelatin and convenience food ephemera collection

The majority of items in this collection were produced to promote Jell-O brand gelatin from the 1910s to the 1970s. Gelatin dishes were once considered a sign of wealth due to their difficult preparation, involving hours of rendering and clarifying. Unflavored, dried gelatin was commercially available by the 1840s, and American industrialist Peter Cooper secured a patent for a granulated gelatin dessert powder in 1845, but did little with his product. Charles Knox began selling sheets of dried gelatin in 1894 and published a recipe book entitled Dainty Desserts in 1896. Cooper sold his patent for granulated gelatin to Pearle Waite of LeRoy, New York, in 1895. Waite created a fruit-flavored gelatin dessert that his wife Mary called “Jell-O,” but lacked the experience and capital to market the product. In 1899, he sold the formula to Orator Frank Woodward, a manufacturer of proprietary medicines and packaged foods in the same town, for $450.

The Jell-O name was first used by Woodward’s Genesee Pure Food Company in 1900 and advertisements for Jell-O gelatin first appeared in Ladies’ Home Journal in 1902, where it was described as “America’s Most Famous Dessert.” In 1904, Woodward began sending out salesmen with free Jell-O cookbooks to distribute to grocers and home economists, and soon employed artists like Rose O’Neill, Maxfield Parrish, and Norman Rockwell to illustrate advertisements. In 1923, Jell-O Company, Inc. took over Genesee Pure Food Company with no change in management or control. In 1925, the company merged with Postum and in 1927 became the General Foods Corporation. The Jell-O factory remained in LeRoy, New York, until 1964, and the town still operates a Jell-O museum. As of 2017, Jell-O gelatin is produced by the Kraft Heinz Company in Dover, Delaware.

Several items in this collection relate to Royal-brand gelatin, which was first produced in 1925, as a subsidiary of the Royal Baking Powder Company. In 1929, the Royal Baking Powder Co. merged with several other enterprises to form Standard Brands, Inc. This conglomerate merged with Nabisco in 1981. In 2000, Jel Sert acquired the Royal brand from Nabisco. Other items in this collection were produced by the Campbell Soup Company, Whirlpool Corporation, Kraft, Inc., and Lipton Kitchens, now a subsidiary of Unilever.

Elizabeth Jones-Minsinger, a graduate student in the University of Delaware’s Department of History, assembled this collection of ephemera while researching the cultural history of gelatin in the twentieth-century United States.

LeBesco, Kathleen. “There’s Always Room for Resistance: Jell-O, Gender, and Social Class,” in Cooking Lessons: The Politics of Gender and Food, edited by Sherrie A. Inness, 129-150. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001.Spring, Joel. Educating the Consumer-Citizen: A History of the Marriage of Schools, Advertising, and Media. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2003. Harvard Baker Library, Lehmann Brothers Collection, “Standard Brands Incorporated” (accessed May 23, 2017) http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/lehman/company.html?company=standard_brands_incorporated Le Roy, New York Historical Society website, “The History of Jell-O” (accessed May 23, 2017) http://www.jellogallery.org/history.html What’s Cooking America website, “History of Gelatin, Gelatine, and Jell-O” (accessed May 23, 2017) https://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Jell-0-history.htm The New York Times. “Upstate, Where It Was First Made, Unwavering Devotion to Jell-O,” May 4, 2008 (accessed May 23, 2017) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/nyregion/04jello.html?ex=1210564800&en=11a9dce77358ac6b&ei=5070&_r=0 Jel Sert Company website, “Royal Fun for Everyone” (accessed May 23, 2017) http://jelsert.com/products/desserts/royal.aspx Funding Universe website, “Nabisco Foods Group History,” (accessed May 23, 2017) http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/nabisco-foods-group-history/ Information derived from the collection.