Posted on 11/29/2004 11:06:46 AM PST by ArcLight
William A Mitchell never became a household name, but most households you can name have something of his in it – Cool Whip, quick-set Jell-O, egg whites for cake mix… He gave American astronauts the first space-age beverage (Tang) and impressionable adolescents one of the great urban legends (Pop Rocks). Bill Mitchell’s inventions are not to everyone’s taste. Once, for a BBC show about Thanksgiving, I served Martha Stewart a pumpkin pie with Cool Whip, and she wasn’t happy about it. As it happens, Martha and Bill Mitchell both have Nutley, New Jersey in common. In the year of Martha’s birth, 1941, Bill Mitchell started work as a chemist at General Foods and briefly lived in Nutley. As he was developing Cool Whip, Martha’s parents were developing the anti-Cool Whip.
Business-wise, the former beats the latter. Originally developed as time-saving substitutes for various elementary kitchen needs, the Kraft/General Foods repertory has multiplied and mutated, and the products which Mitchell and his colleagues developed live happily within a self-contained universe. To make Kraft’s Classic Angel Flake Coconut Cake you need a 7 oz bag of Baker’s Angel Flake Coconut, a package of yellow cake mix, a package of Jell-O White Chocolate Instant Pudding, and a tub of Cool Whip. It’s like modular furniture: sometimes you put Cool Whip in the Jell-O, sometimes you put Jell-O in the Cool Whip. But it’s an all-or-nothing world. It would be unsettling and intrusive to replace the Cool Whip with Martha’s recipe for crème anglaise.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
BTTT
Just remember, Jeffery Dahmer didn't want a man with good taste, he wanted a man who tastes good.
Another inductee to the hall of unsung heroes.
Good re-read. I took this post to mean that Steyn Online is back up with current material. No such luck!
Only REAL whipped creme touches MY Pumpkin Pie!
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