One of my family's most frequently made recipes is this macaroni salad. It is creamy, sweet and addictive, and you always have room for seconds and thirds. When asking my grandma where this recipe came from, she said she didn't know but thought maybe from her grandmother. Periodically, I search the internet for a similar recipe, but have never found anything quite like it. I thought this latest search would quickly lead to a dead end, but then realized the mystery had to lie in the secret ingredient, Miracle Whip.
Miracle Whip was first introduced at the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago. While it seemed funny to think of a condiment being a highlight of the world's fair, I immediately thought there may be more to the story, as my grandma was born in East St Louis, Illinois in 1932. The focus of this world's fair was techonogical innovation, reportedly in an attempt to boost morale during the great depression.
As people tried to save money, they were buying fewer products and making what they needed at home. Kraft, seeing sales of mayonaise dropping, decided they needed a new, innovative product. Using a new machine, they developed a cheaper alternative to mayo, Miracle Whip.
Miracle Whip is based on boiled dressing, which was popular in German and British cooking and included ingredients such as vinegar, sugar/honey, milk, eggs, salt, spices, and flour that were slowly cooked to use in recipes such as potato, chicken, or egg salad and cole slaw. While researching Miracle Whip's history, I found a great divide between people who either loved it or hated it, making me think about why we like the foods we do. Research is being done into how our DNA sequence could play a factor in what foods we like or do not like, by signaling to our brains what smells/tastes good or bad. Adding this to our cultural and social experiences of foods can help to understand why people have such different food tastes. I imagined those with a history of eating boiled dressing were more open to trying this new, convient option, and once you grew up eating it, you were more likely to keep eating it.
This finally brings me to what I found to be the most fun aspect of this journey, the legend of Max Crosset and his X-Tra Fine Salad Dressing. Supposedly in a cafe about an hour from my grandma's home, in Salem, Illinois, Max created the recipe for the now famous salad dressing (as an aside Miracle Whip is not considered mayo because it contains less than 65% fat, which is the threshhold for fat content as regulated by the FDA). Max reportedly sold the recipe to a Kraft representative in 1931 for $300. While Kraft denys this, they do admit to buying recipes at the time to work on their products. I searched forever to try and find a newspaper ad or old recipe from either Max or the early days of Miracle Whip to see where my family's recipe came from, and while I still cannot find anything just like it, I imagine my great great grandma, who was the cook in the family as my great grandma worked as a single mother to 4 children including one with a developmental disability, clipping a recipe from an ad for a macaroni salad using a new, innovative product that was economical as well as touched on flavors from their German ancestry.
Max’s X-tra Fine
Written by Becky Michael Zeissler, 2011
“Max’s X-tra Fine!” she said,
“Now that’s the one for me”
The patron put her order in
Max sliced the ham, but not too thin,
Then slathered dressing on the bread,
A masterpiece to see.
One Autumn day a stranger came
To Crossett’s grocery store
“My time is tight, just passing through,
For lunch I’ve got some moments (few),
A salad please—house dressing’s good!
In fact, I’ll have some more!”
This man from Kraft, he struck a deal
With Crossett on that day.
“Sell us your dressing recipe,
We’ll pay 300 dollars fee”
The men shook hands and Max was pleased
To get such for his pay.
The Great Depression, grim and long,
Was worse in ‘33
Substitutes were put in force,
For coffee, butter, (meat, of course)
Kraft dusted off Max’s receipt
And said “Now we will see.”
They ran a batch of X-tra Fine
Through Chapman’s new machine
“Miracle Whip,” the gadget’s name
At World’s Fair it gained great fame
And when it made its debut there
Reviews were very keen.
Much praise was given bolts and steel,
The gears that twist and roll
“It whips the dressing, smooth and thick
Unrivaled blending, that’s the trick!”
But Max, he knew, and Salem too
The spices were the soul.
In Salem, Illinois we hold
This mem’ry to be dear.
We cannot prove with legal claim
That Salem’s son deserves such fame
Nor has the legend been disproved
The dressing started here.