Aspic - Tomato Soup Salad

This is a recipe my mother-in-law fixed for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Ruth used individual fluted metal molds, unmolding the salad onto platters lined with lettuce leaves. The molds looked much like those in the graphic above. There are many other styles available today - just Google "individual tin jello molds."

Unfortunately, Ruth's molds disappeared over the years, but I found a set on eBay and the tradition is reborn.  It's not a favorite dish for all of us, but many enjoy having salad flavors and tastes in such a different presentation.  As with many dishes that do not appeal to all, it soon disappears as people "take just a bite to see if it tastes as bad as I remember." My father-in-law's oyster dressing used to disappear the same way.

It is a very good salad -- just don't think of it as sweet or a dessert and it will taste great.

I've seen similar recipes that add olives, green and or black, sliced or chopped; chopped bell peppers; peppers of your heat choice; sliced boiled eggs. Whatever flavors you wish in a salad could be incorporated for variations. 

This is Ruth's recipe, though, and she used the specific brands shown below.

2 small boxes lemon Jello
2 cups hot water
1 can Campbell's Cream of Tomato soup, undiluted
6 ounces Philadelphia cream cheese, cut into small pieces and softened
1 cup Miracle Whip salad dressing
1 cup finely chopped celery
1 tablespoon minced onion
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Dissolve the Jello in hot water and allow it to cool. Heat tomato soup slowly adding the cream cheese until the cheese is melted. Cool.

Combine gelatin and soup mixtures. Add salad dressing and mix well.

Add remaining ingredients. Mix well, pour into individual molds and refrigerate until firm. Yields 14 to 16 servings, so if you have less people, simply halve the recipe. I know, it's difficult with one can of soup, but that other half would go with a toasted cheese sandwich for lunch while making the aspic, right?