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It was a mid 20th century fad. Aspic had been very expensive and time consuming for a long time and so was considered a high status food.

Then in the post WW2 era we had immense prosperity the likes of which we hadn't seen before, not just because we were the largest industrialized nation to not be bombed to rubble and had ramped up our industrial capacity, but also because after the great depression and world wars, this was the first time that our average citizen got to experience the full boon of the second industrial revolution. Even better, the new deal (a massive government program meant to end the great depression, increase food supply, and generally just improve the quality of life) as well as the effects of food safety and purity laws and veterans benefits were all in full force.

People who had had a very difficult life suddenly owned a house, had domestic labor saving machines, time and energy to entertain, and modern mass produced industrial foods of quality we now would consider fit for human consumption. Many of these people didn't know how to cook with after 15 years of rationing. But not to worry! Modern advertising and marketing also came into being in this time. This is the era of the long form ad, and with it the idea that you could just print recipes on the side of ingredients and people would just try them.

So jello… in the early 20th century gelatin went from being something you have to spend a long time rendering out of bones yourself, using imprecise equipment like a wood fired stove, to an industrial food product you can buy for a few cents. All this came together for ad campaigns of weird savory and sweet and savory-sweet jello dishes, usually using other industrial foodstuffs from the same company like hot dogs, mayonnaise, and canned fruit and vegetables. And people who didn't know how to cook with these new foods and tools said sure and tried some of them, typically to serve at parties.

This is the equivalent of if suddenly you could buy lab grown lobster and sirloin for a buck or two a pound, and for a while everyone's poor as shit so they're stretching their beans as far as the can, but suddenly everyone is able to buy a house and have a few kids with plenty of money left over from 1 person working 20 hours a week. The people selling lobster are going to have to remind you that this is high quality food for cheap, and they have to teach you how to use it. It starts simple, roasted tails with butter, bisque, the classics. Then they start moving into weirder stuff like lobster burgers, before eventually getting into weird shit like lobster chocolate cake. And the weirdest thing here is it's actually more like if the lobster chocolate cake came pretty early and completely dominated the cultural mindset to the point where people think that the weird savory stuff was gross because lobster is a desert food that's sometimes used in traditional savory dishes.

Oh and the reason you keep seeing Americans talk about it is because we think it sounds gross as hell