Earlier this week, a recipe purported to be the original secret recipe for Coca-Cola was revealed by the Chicago radio program This American Life. Coca-Cola has denied that this is their recipe, but who can resist the intrigue? Speaking of intriguing, I’m sure you’re dying to know what strange and wonderful foods can be made with your favorite cola-type beverage.
I found a recipe in one of my cookbooks for something called Cola Salad. How enigmatic! But what is it? Is Cola Salad a regional slang for coleslaw? Guess again! Is Cola Salad a fresh bed of arugula and dandelion greens topped with a cola vinaigrette? It isn’t! (Although now I need to find out if such a salad exists in real life.) If you hadn’t figured it out by the pictures, Cola Salad is another one of those notoriously questionable gelatin molds; I wouldn’t actually call it a “salad” by any modern or conventional standard. This is the sort of salad that an eight-year-old would come up with.
It tastes quite sweet, but you can barely taste the cola. Instead, it tastes more like cherry cough syrup in solid form “¦ but with whole cherries, pieces of walnut, and cream cheese mixed in. It didn’t taste offensive (at least not compared to some of the other strange recipes I have followed), but if you’re going to call it Cola Salad, it should at least be demonstrably Cola-like or salad-like, right? I would have preferred for it to have a caramel/cola flavor. Perhaps if I had left out the liquid from the cherries, and boiled some cola with the pineapple juice, it would have had more of the flavor I associate with cola drinks.
Now, cut yourself some Coke. And this time (unlike at that one party that a friend of a friend went to that one time), everything is completely legal and won’t make anyone laugh at inappropriate moments.
Cola Salad
1 large can bing cherries
1 large can crushed pineapple
1 package cherry-flavored gelatin
1 package strawberry-flavored gelatin
1 (8-oz) package cream cheese
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 cups cola
Drain juice from cherries and pineapple; heat. Dissolve gelatins; let cool. Mix pineapple, cheese, nuts, and cherries with gelatin mixture. Add cola last; blend. Pour into mold.; chill until firm. Yields 8 servings.
This recipe appeared in The Encyclopedia of Creative Cooking, published by Weathervane Books, 1982.
15 replies on “Morbid Curiosity Monday: Cola Salad”
I was regaling a group of friends with the awesomeness of Morbid Curiosity Monday on Sunday! I want to have a dinner party with nothing but items from this feature…
I expect that the big, pink, wobbly Coke salad would make me laugh as inappropriate moments, but I am occasionally overtaken by a twelve-year-old boy’s sense of humor.
A friend of mine has a recipe for Dr. Pepper pot roast that is wonderful, but it doesn’t taste a thing like Dr. Pepper.
As always Ms. Disarray, your morbid curiosity has made my Monday :)
Oh, dear god, I made Coke Salad in my high school cooking class Idon’twanttosayhowmany years ago and it was terrible. My stomach is cringing just thinking about it.
Really? Was it a similar recipe? I’d be interested in comparing!
No no no! That is not Coca-Cola salad! At least, now how it should be. This–http://www.deepsouthdish.com/2010/11/old-fashioned-cherry-coke-salad.html–is Coca-Cola salad, and it is, in fact, remarkably delicious. It’s definitely regional; I’ve never heard of it being made commonly except in the Deep South, where my husband is from. It is proudly featured at every family get-together he has, and even this California girl thinks it’s pretty amazing. Trust me–it’s weird, but it’s good.
The Cola Salad that you linked to looks pretty good! I think the one I made is a little strange because it has cream cheese in it. Why ruin perfectly good cream cheese this way? For that matter, why ruin perfectly good Coke? ;)
Wow. I might make this for my next old-school food party. Have you seen those all-Coke cookbooks? I see them pop up now and again at the supermarket till.
You should try it! It doesn’t taste too bad, just a little too syrupy for my liking. I wish my friends lived close enough that I could host old-school food parties for them! Sounds like fun!
It’s super fun, you’d love it. Last time I made something called a wiener tiara. It was spectacular.
I think I have a recipe for that! I was hoping to try it out sometime. It looked like it ranked right up there with ham-wrapped bananas!
It’s in one of the books from the Family Circle Illustrated Library of Cooking. The one with an entire chapter on hot dog recipes. There’s also one for a wiener crown that is tied together with corn husks.
WHAT IS THAT?!!
Though I can’t talk, I have a recipe from my mother/maybe grandmother for Coca-Cola cake. It’s delicious, but you can only make it through one piece.
OMG. I need to see that recipe! Pretty please with Coca Cola on top? (If you can find it…)
Oh that looks repulsive. What is it with people and shoving things into molds? Is food better without its natural shape? And I am sorely, SORELY disappointed that the salad wasn’t the least bit fizzy or cola-y. That would be pretty cool.
I think squishing foods into unnatural shapes demonstrates your skills as some sort of Food Wizard. I was pretty disappointed that it didn’t have more of a cola taste, too. False advertising, I say!