I do not jiggle with joy when I behold ambrosia. I slowly back away.
Because more often than not, ambrosia—a side dish common in the South and Midwest—takes the ghastly form of a jiggly collision of salad and dessert. It gets the salad status from its fruit, its dessert status from the marshmallows and/or Jell-O and/or Cool Whip that is often involved. It looks like some kind of psychedelic quicksand and tastes like a mattress coated in Fruity Pebbles.
It hasn’t always been this terrible. The dish has humble origins in the American South as a holiday treat of coconut, citrus, and syrup. This was in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the dish often incorporated sliced pineapple, a luxury item at the time. Sounds great, right?
That was before it started being packed into cans and drowned in syrup. And it was definitely before marshmallows became involved.
The marshmallow changed everything—asit usually does. During the 1920s and ‘30s, theWhitman’s Corporation created a marshmallowspread (or fluff) that managed to find its way into ambrosia recipes in the Midwest. Ambrosia as the modern monstrosity was beginning to take a formless form.
In 1975, ambrosia "salad" took another turn for the worse when Kraft unleashedPistachio Pineapple Delightonto the world. This riff on ambrosia contains crushed pineapple, pistachio instant pudding, marshmallows, and "whipped topping." And because of what was happening in the news those days (and because the jiggly salad resembled Richard Nixon’s jowls), this salad earned the nickname “Watergate Salad.”
Later, ambrosia earned another nickname: “Green Stuff.” And that's when ambrosia hit rock bottom. Or pond bottom. Because that, after all, is where one expects "green stuff" to be found.
A couple years ago some of my Southern cooking heroes started putting out "contemporary" version of ambrosia. I put "contemporary" in quotes because, for the most part, these "upgrades" take ambrosia back to what it originally was: fresh fruit.
But while these new versions have freshness on lock, I still don't know where ambrosia falls on the dessert-salad fence. TheLee Brothersmake their ambrosia with parsley and endive. That’s a salad. Vivian Howard makesone with pomegranate seeds, coconut, and sour cream. That’s dessert. Chef Ed Lee of Louisville’s610 Magnoliamakes an ambrosia with high-quality coconut, fresh fruit and blue cheese. That's...a salad? Dessert? Unclear. But one thing it's definitely not: Green Stuff.
