A social history of jello salad: a scientific study on the role and evolution of the dish in society.

In 2005, when my great-grandmother Rita McCoy passed away at the age of 99, we gave her an Orthodox funeral in her hometown in western Pennsylvania.

Following the ceremony, the ladies of Springdale Presbyterian Church, downstairs of the church, hosted a funeral luncheon, as always.

There were cheese sandwiches. There were the giant pots of rigatoni that you always see at almost every Pittsburgh party. There were cookies. And, of course, there were jello salads.

Dish after dish of jiggling, glistening jello molded in the shape of rings, pigtails, even tuna jelly fish. Colors of cherry with fruit, pistachio green with nuts and marshmallows, clear lemon yellow with vegetables: it seemed we had gone back in time.

Rita, who raised her children and grandchildren in the days of her youth in the mid-20th century, when jello salads were in vogue, would surely have loved it. "Few foods can tell us more about life in 20th-century America than a quivering gem of homemade achievement: the jello salad," the text reads.