Vintage Recipe Roulette: 1960s Kool-Aid Pie's Grape of Wrath
And, why "grape" doesn't taste like grape, but does make a great bird repellent
This week’s foray into inadvisable kitchen experiments comes by request! My good friend Jen from Laughing at Chaos has been rooting for me to make Tang Pie, also known as Astronaut Pie. It’s a no-bake filling made of various dairy products plus some dry Tang drink mix powder.
But, Max Miller of Tasting History did such an amazing job breaking down the history there that I decided to tweak it a bit so that I can talk about a different niche of food history and chemistry. The basic recipe uses citric acid to thicken a sweetened condensed milk filling via protein denaturization, so you can use any tart and sugary drink mix. I certainly had my share of Tang as a 70s kid, but my heart belonged to Kool-Aid. I’m going to make this pie with my powder of choice (and I won’t be the first).
The history of Kool-Aid has even less to do with astronauts than Tang does, but it’s still plenty interesting. It was invented in the 1920s by Edwin Perkins, a big fan of chemicals like laundry bluing and perfume. He was reportedly super inspired by the wonder that is Jell-O. (It all comes together, doesn’t it?) At first, it was a drink called Fruit Smack sold in glass bottles, but selling the dry powder made for easier transport and more flexible home usage in everything from sherbet to copycat Jell-O.
Let’s head to the store to pick out a packet with promise! My goodness, so many flavor choices with the Kool-Aid: Pineapple, Cherry, Orange, Sharkleberry Fin…(??? Like, Huckleberry Finn? It makes me think of shark fin soup, which I don’t want to think about. And why is the shark wearing goggles on the label? I have so many questions.) My curiosity almost got the better of me on that last one, but in the end, because friend of the blog Greta Hardin of the excellent podcast History of American Food recently reminded me of its origin, I went with…
Grape!
Sort of.
Have you ever wondered why they claim “grape” flavor tastes like grapes when it clearly doesn’t? Me too, and it turns out we’re both wrong. Artificial grape flavor is otherwise known as methyl anthranilate, or MANT, which sounds like it should be a cute nickname for Paul Rudd’s Marvel alter ego. It’s actually an ester, a chemical substance made by the condensation of an alcohol with an acid that often has aromatic qualities, and it’s in a lot of plant scents, but when sniffed solo, the scientists thought it smelled like grapes. Most people today think it smells like grapes in the same way arthritis cream smells like Chanel No. 5, but there’s a reason for that — MANT is mainly found only in native-descended varieties of Concord grapes, which is all that was around in the U.S. until much more recent history. Concords are what Welch’s uses to make its nuclear purple grape jelly. Fake grape doesn’t smell or taste anything like the fresh green or red Chilean grapes you might buy at the store these days, but if you think about that old familiar purple jar, it starts to make more sense, doesn’t it?
That’s where the good sense stops, though. If you’ve been reading me for a while, you might know that I like to joke about processed foods being made out of pencil shavings. My dirty little secret? It’s funny in a twisted way, because some processed food additives ARE made out of pencil shavings — or at least, out of sawdust.
Am I telling you grape flavoring is made out of sawdust? Of course not! Relax.
It’s made out of coal tar.
Am I still kidding? Nope, just watch this guy make it out of disposable gloves.
Alas, although it was first isolated from orange blossoms, it wasn’t long before they were making it — for use in foods mind you — from coal byproducts, and they still are, although there are some new ways using microbial cultures. And, it’s sufficiently noxious to be used as bird repellent in open air and lasts for weeks. Mmmmm…petroleum-based bird repellent pie. I can’t wait!
Here are the main ingredients. The original recipe for Tang Pie is easy as…well, you know. It calls for a can of sweetened condensed milk, 1/2 c sour cream, a tub of Cool Whip, and 3/4 of a cup of Tang powder, mixed and poured into a graham crust. A standard package of Kool-Aid calls for 1 c. of sugar, so I’m going to use 3/4 of the package plus 3/4 c of sugar to get me in the ballpark.
First, you mix the condensed milk with the drink mix. Here is my Kool-Aid brand methyl anthranilate-kissed citric acid, sitting atop a mound of sugar looking like a pile of ashes, much like my dignity. There will be a cool thickening effect from the action of the acid on the milk proteins when blended.
Once mixed in, it’s a quite respectable purple, and you can really smell the bird repellent! Adding the sour cream and whipped topping (I’m using Cocowhip to accommodate some allergies in the house) lightens it up a lot. It’s a final shade Miss Piggy would be really proud of.
Once poured into the cooled crust, it’s a terrifying lilac in color, and that turns my mind to the issue of garnish. If I were going to go with grapes, they would have to be Concord, and gosh, my local store is fresh out. What else could fulfill the highest purpose of the garnish — to adorn while hinting at the flavors within?
I suddenly remembered that I have a quarter packet of Kool-Aid left, and that ounce of whipped topping that Max Miller found he didn’t need to add. A little extra blue really punched it up and kept the decoration on brand, which is to say, totally uncalled for.
Miller found it barely set, and since my grandmother’s favorite lemon pie was perfectly sliceable texture with just lemon juice and condensed milk sans Cool Whip, I think too soft is probably the best you can expect with the Tang Pie recipe as written, so I’ve frozen it for slicing and serving. There’s so much sugar in it that it remains soft even after freezing overnight, so there’s no need to thaw.
So upon tasting is it indeed really wonderful? No. It tastes like Cool Whip with bird repellent in it. The grape, I mean “grape”, flavor just does not hold up to the whipped topping. It’s too flat, reminiscent of Flinstones vitamins without the iron filings. The extra drink powder in the garnish brought some welcome acidity, but the alleged “grape” is over the top. I think it would be great with one of the tart citrus flavors, though, or maybe the pineapple one. The texture even when frozen is creamy, but on the dense, gooey side rather than the custard-y side. I much prefer that to lemon meringue, and it’s so nice not to have raw eggs trying to kill you, but I wonder whether using less sugar might make it less sticky. It would be an incredibly easy way to get a pie on color theme for a baby or bridal shower — mint green, pale yellow, pink, blue — in less than 5 minutes if you start with a store-bought graham crust.
Between this and the Gatorwine I reviewed for TODAY, I’ve had more than my share of FD&C Blue #1 lately, so if you’d like to make this, I hope you try one that’s a smidge more natural. Use 1 can of sweetened condensed milk mixed with 3/4 c sugar and 4 tsp of natural crystallized lemon or lime juice powder (I like True Lemon and Lime, not an ad, just like it!). Add in 1/2 c of sour cream (or cream cheese if you’d like it to be a lil’ firmer) and most of a tub of Cocowhip whipped topping, reserving just a little for garnish. Pour into prepared graham crust and freeze for at least 2 hours or preferably overnight. Garnish with whipped cream and a citrus twist for a less unhinged presentation.
I’m going to go make some Dense Bean Salad to atone for this Space Age abomination. Trying this recipe has been a fun exercise in nostalgia, but it’s also taught me that as bad as it is to drink the grape Kool-Aid, it’s even worse to eat it.
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