See it Wiggle, Watch it Jiggle! | Chef Darin Sehnert – Hands on Cooking Classes

My good friend Tom Weaver, whom I met while working at Walt Disney World in Florida, is originally from the area around Rochester and the Finger Lakes of upstate New York. He returned several years ago to make it home once again. Through my friendship with him I’ve also become very good friends with the rest of his family and have enjoyed visiting all of them over the past decade that I’ve known them. Having been a few years since my last trip I was yearning to return and see the beautiful countryside and enjoy some of the locally produced foods.

I mainly wanted to visit good friends, unplug from work and get started on some recipe projects (cookbook, etc.) that I just haven’t had time to focus on due to distractions at home. As you can probably guess, the trip still centered around food and just the same as with any trip, wasn’t nearly long enough!

One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the birthplace of “America’s Favorite Dessert”: Jello!

Jello Gallery – LeRoy, NY

Tom took the first day of my visit off from work so that we could hang out and do something together while I was there. When he asked what I wanted to do I think he probably assumed I’d want to visit the wineries around the lakes, something we’ve done on several occasions. Problem is…after you visit one, they start to look the same. The scenery is beautiful but I wanted to experience other food related aspects of the Rochester area. I recalled learning on a previous trip that Jell-O had been invented in a town just west of Rochester. As we debated whether to visit the Corning glass museum in Corning, NY or the Jello Museum, I suddenly felt a little like Clark Griswold from the Vacation movies, and said “Let’s go to the Jell-O Museum!”. At this point I figure he was probably re-thinking his idea of taking the day off. “I’d be more likely to visit the glass plant with the kids so sure, let’s do the Jello museum” he responded. Huh???…what kid wouldn’t want to visit the very town where wiggly jiggle jello was first invented??

How do you get there? Well, follow the “Jello Brick Road” of course!

The Jello Brick Road links the Jello Gallery with the LeRoy House museum and features bricks engraved with the names of former Jello employees, including one for Bill Cosby who’s considered the longest running single product spokesman in history.

Located at the LeRoy Historical society in LeRoy, NY, the Jello Gallery features the history of one of America’s favorite desserts. Commercially processed plain gelatin had been invented in the mid-1800’s and was sold under the “Knox” brand name. in It wasn’t until Pearle B. Wait, a local inventor and creator of various “remedies & potions” added fruit flavors to powdered gelatin and created what his wife named “Jell-O”. Unable to successfully sell the new food item himself, he sold the recipe, patent and rights to Orator Francis Woodward for the mere sum of $450.

Woodward owned the Genesee Pure Food Company and saw the potential for the product. However he too had challenges in selling it and at one point even told one of his primary employees that he’d sell him the business for $35. Even a price that cheap wasn’t enough to convince the employee to have a go at it. He told Woodward “If you can’t sell the stuff, what makes you think I could?”. Eventually Woodward hit on a marketing concept that is considered the frontrunner of something that is still done today…giving away free samples as a way of hooking people on a new product. In 1904 he put together a small booklet of recipes for using Jell-O and then hired salesmen to go door to door and give away a full package of Jello along with the recipe booklet so that housewives could try it out for free. He then went to the local shops in the towns that he canvassed and told the shopkeepers that the local women were trying out this new product and would be looking for a place to purchase more of it. Jello was a success!

His widow and eldest son who ran the company after O.F. Woodward’s untimely death, sold the business to the Postum company for $60,000 in 1925. Jell-O continued to be manufactured in LeRoy until 1964 when production was moved to Dover Delaware after it was purchased by General Foods.

Among the featured displays of the Jello Gallery are original oil paintings that were done by noted artists for use in advertising campaigns and recipe booklets.

A display of promotional Jello molds as well as more decorative ones highlights the fanciful manner in which Jello has often been presented.

One of the more interesting displays I enjoyed was the “Jello-Timeline” that highlights the various flavors and products that have been introduced over the years: