Candy salad, wait… candy and salad… together? For me, the first image of salad that comes to mind is one of lettuce and vegetables, yet dessert salad does exist. Depending on your location, candy salads aren’t a novelty they’re a mainstay, gracing many midwestern tables, especially during potlucks, church suppers, and backyard grill parties. Just how did candy salad come to be a distinctly American side dish?
These sweeter salads got a strong foothold thanks to adaptation and company advertisements. Sweet salads became a trend enforced by food manufacturers, who drove the sales of canned fruit in multiple applications (not all of them particularly pleasant by today’s standard). Bright red maraschino cherries debuted on shelves in the 1920s — and from then onward — the weird fusions of sweet fruit with even sweeter gelatins and creams were called “delights.”
While delight salads spread across the country, there was already an interesting niche dessert well established in the midwest. As high concentrations of immigrants from Sweden, Norway, and Finland poured into the heartland, their culinary traditions followed suit. Rommegrot (it goes by different names in different countries) is a famous Norwegian dessert that’s, essentially, a pudding. Over in Europe, rommegrot was consumed with savory dishes, but in America, a sweeter application became more common. This midwest version made sense, as it used ingredients that were more readily available and affordable, American rommegrot was eaten with bright seasonal fruit and crunchy locally-foraged nuts, and this dish is considered by many to be the precursor of the candy salad. The modified European pudding had all of the elements of a candy salad – sweet creamy base, juicy fruit, and texturally different nuts.
So when company convenience crossed paths with cultural heritage, the sweet candy salad was formed. Now there isn’t just one type of candy salad, but the classic candy has chopped chocolate candy bars, chopped green apples, and a bed of whipped topping folded with instant vanilla pudding. If you feel adventurous, you can branch out and play with different candy bars, pudding flavors, and fruits, it’s up to you!