A sweet slice in history: Is Watergate salad making a comeback?
Living in a time when new health trends are released on — what feels like — a weekly basis along with the latest fad diet to complement it, to say the latest retro desserts combat blew me away is an understatement.
Although it may be green, the Watergate salad is no ordinary salad. After preparing the salad for her work Thanksgiving party that was shared on TikTok, Kelly McDuff realized it wasn’t as popular a holiday dish as she had previously thought.
“It’s just a staple of our Thanksgiving,” McDuff told The New York Times. “So I thought it was a staple at everybody’s. And then, I realized it wasn’t.”
Since the TikTok video was posted nearly a month ago, it has amassed over 18 million views and more than 56,000 comments, with people intrigued by McDuff's choice of side dish.
What is Watergate salad made of?
According to Allrecipes, the fluffy green dish that grew in popularity in the late 1970s consists of five ingredients:
Pistachio pudding mix.
Canned pineapple.
Miniature marshmallows.
Walnuts.
Cool Whip.
After a while, the salad lost its popular status, “The convenience of powdered pudding mix gave way to more artisan and organic experiences,” per NPR. “The excessive sweetness of a molded salad is no longer the taste of the day.”
“We don’t value fun in the same way,” Susan Benjamin, founder of True Treats Historic Candy, told NPR. “We’re always checking ourselves for too much sugar, too much of this, too much of that, instead of just immersing ourselves into what we really love.”
Fascinated by the mere existence of Watergate salad, I asked my mom, who hails from the Midwest and was a teenager during the salad’s debut, if she’d had it. “Yes. I don’t love it,” she said. “It’s been a while, though. It seems like it makes its rounds during the holidays because it's green, but it reminds me of the disgusting jello salad with veggies that is famous in Utah.”
“I don’t like texture in something that should be smooth, but it was a trendy dish back then,” she added.
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Why do they call it Watergate salad?
Despite its name, there’s no direct connection to the Watergate scandal; the name seems to have been adopted more for its catchy and memorable nature rather than any historical significance.
According to Southern Living, the salad “made an appearance in the 1970s, when Jell-O launched its pistachio-flavored instant pudding mixes. It was, however, known by different names like pistachio pudding salad or pineapple pistachio delight until around 1993 when Kraft revised the famous recipe, adding mini marshmallows and renaming it the ‘Watergate Salad.’”
An article published in a Maryland newspaper in September 1974, a month after President Richard Nixon’s resignation, gives some evidence of the salad’s name: “It explains that the Watergate name is a piece of satirical wordplay, based on the fact that the cake had a ‘cover-up’ in the form of its thick frosting and that, much like Washington D.C., the cake was ‘full of nuts.’ The dish quickly caught on because the word ‘Watergate’ was already on everybody’s tongues in the mid-1970s,” per Tasting Table.
Although perhaps not as universally known as other classic American dishes, Watergate salad has maintained a level of popularity, particularly in certain regions and among those who appreciate nostalgic or retro recipes. According to NPR, “Kraft says more than 100,000 people have visited its recipe for Watergate salad online.”
