Date: Fri, 7 Apr 1995 08:33:08 -0400

From: Wayne Glowka wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MAIL.GAC.PEACHNET.EDU

Subject: Re: Ambrosia!



Peter McGraw isn't the only one on the list who remembers ambrosia as

a "salad" (seemed like a dessert to me) made with pieces of fresh fruit

(usually including canned mandarin orange slices), nuts (usually English

walnuts), marshmallows, coconut, and whipped cream (the real stuff).

The fruit had to include apples and bananas. No jello. Jello desserts

came along later, and most of the netters have written about jello desserts

rather than ambrosia. But if one allows the semantic range of terms to

spread, one can call all of them ambrosia. Oh, yes, I forgot pineapple.

I remember reacting in the 1970s to the use of 'ambrosia' to refer to

jello salads -- particularly bothered by use of the term for combinations

that did not include coconut. In the 1940s my mother and her friends would

get whole coconuts when possible and break them open and then grate the

meat. They would save the liquid from the coconut to use in a real

coconut cream pie. This was in the 1940s. DMLance



Still done this way in Milledgeville, GA. The coconut is cracked by

heating it in the oven. What would the microwave do to it?











Wayne Glowka

Professor of English

Director of Research and Graduate Student Services

Georgia College

Milledgeville, GA 31061

912-453-4222

wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]mail.gac.peachnet.edu