ARE YOU READY FOR THIS JELLY?
It’s clear, we need the sweet escape of niche culinary Facebook groups
Hashtagged #notyourcollegejelloshots, Ken Albala’s wobbly creations captured my imagination the moment I first saw them. Different from absolutely every other post in my social media feeds, their intricacy and jiggliness is astounding. Playful and peculiar, they draw you in, even if you’re not exactly sure what they’re composed of.
One day in February, the University of the Pacific food historian posted a “Belgian waffle” made out of peach lambic jelly, filled with a mixture of cream cheese and sour cream, which he had rolled and sliced. On another, he shared a photo of rye crispbread, which he had topped with brunost (Norwegian whey cheese), lox, pickles, chives and sour cream, before enveloping in translucent Aquavit jelly.
When we spoke last month, Albala was in the midst of preparing an hors d’oeuvre: dates stuffed with chestnuts, soaked in port, wrapped in bacon, baked and then encased in rosé jelly infused with rosemary. When he posted it to Facebook later that day, it garnered more than 1,000 likes in less than 24 hours.
Albala’s fascination with the quivering medium started last summer when a friend dared him to join Show Me Your Aspics. With nearly 40,000 members, the fouryear-old Facebook group caters to a very specific community: people with a shared passion for all things gelatinous. It’s a rabbit hole of slomo jiggle videos, glossy objects of gelatin flower art, disconcerting vintage finds, and wiggly experiments both savoury and sweet. It’s also the perfect example of how delightful it can be to surrender to a far from serious pursuit in very serious times.
It would appear there are niche culinary Facebook groups devoted to interests you didn’t even know you had. An offshoot of Show Me Your Aspics, there’s Aspics With Threatening Auras, a community of nearly 10,000 members set on “Discovering and discussing aspics that make you feel unsafe while viewing.” In the food preservation realm, there’s Rude Rebellious Canners — rabble-rousers who “don’t always follow the rules’’ — Albala’s own group, The Cult of Pre-pasteurian Preservation and Food Preparation, and Show Me Your Charcuterie. For those fond of fermented beverages, there’s Kombucha Nation — 76,000-members strong — and Milk the Funk.
What began as a lark — seeing how far he could push the undulating boundaries of gelatin — has earned Albala a book deal (he has written or edited more than 25 food-related books). His working title for the manuscript, due this fall, is The New Age of Aspic. “I’m trying to change people’s minds,” says Albala, laughing, “which is maybe over-ambitious.” At the heart of his approach is a reimagining of the Jell-o shots of yore.
“They were dreadful but the idea is actually kind of fun — to have a cocktail with a nibble, stuffed together. The interesting textures, colours and ingredients that go in are just playful and silly.”
It’s this silliness that sets the stage for heightened lockdown curiosity. Now that our days are spent primarily between the same four walls, unlikely corners of the internet provide much-needed relief. From how to buy it to how to cook it, food is the backdrop of our daily lives. A potential source of both anxiety and pleasure during a crisis, it connects us — and that connection is only intensified through our use of social media.
“Much of our leisure activities have been focused on food and technology,” says Jenna Jacobson, a social media specialist and professor at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Retail Management in Toronto. “We need food to survive, of course, and we need technology to stay connected. So while food feeds our bodies, technologies are feeding our souls.”
Niche communities are as old as the internet itself, and Facebook is but one of many platforms. People have long found camaraderie in groups of often far-flung souls who have the same fervent interests. While your circle of real-life friends may not share your penchant for watching unsettling aspic-spanking videos or swapping sourdough formulas, there are millions of others online who surely do. For those looking for new hobbies or pursuing interests they may not have before, these communities offer inspiration, support and companionship.
“Having a niche group, it’s about creating a unique differentiator,” says Jacobson. “What makes this group different from joining some other group? And whether or not that is a bizarre rule or whether it’s just the types of people that are engaging in that specific group, it’s pulling people together.”
When I joined Aspics With Threatening Auras, for example, I vowed to, whenever posting original content, “spank the aspic” and “make sure the silverware doesn’t clink and scrape the damn plate.” The specificity involved is central to their charm, as is a sense of humour and self-awareness. You may join one of these niche groups for a laugh at their expense only to learn they’re not only in on the joke, they’re way ahead of you. They dwell in culinary topics that are decidedly unconventional and flourish in the recesses of social media.
“I think the little niches happen because they’re topics that mainstream TV certainly (isn’t going to touch),” says Albala. “They’re never going to do fermentation — ‘Oh, we’re going to get sued’ — and they’re never going to do charcuterie because they think everyone’s going to kill themselves. I think aspic is like that. It’s just too weird for the mainstream, so people find this stuff on Facebook and you can do whatever you want. There’s no liability.”
Before he joined Show Me Your Aspics, Albala wasn’t just disinterested in the form, he was a self-described Jell-o hater and hadn’t eaten it since he was a child. Now known as “Jiggle Daddy” to others in the community, he became an aspic influencer with no premeditation whatsoever.
“I would never in a million years have thought of making jello for a year. Just the fact that there’s a group there reaffirms my weirdness,” he laughs. “I don’t know whether most people in the world would think this is a worthwhile way to spend time — it probably isn’t — but it’s fun. And I guess I’m at a point in my career where I can do what I like, so that’s good. But that would never have happened had there not been this niche, weird group there. And I guess there is for everything.”