美国国家公共电台 NPR Watergate Salad: A Fluffy Green Bite Of Washington, D.C.'s Past

 

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Thirty years ago, if you walked into a deli or supermarket in Washington, D.C., you might find, sitting in the refrigerator case, a dish called Watergate salad. Today, it's harder to find. The salad's disappearance¹ has less to do with a political scandal and more to do with America's changing tastes, as Gabe Bullard of member station WAMU reports.

GABE BULLARD, BYLINE²: We often think of salads now as leafy and green. And while the Watergate salad is green, there are no leaves in sight. It's made of pistachio pudding mix, a can of crushed pineapple, whipped topping, nuts and marshmallows. Those ingredients place the dish's origin firmly in the era of Jell-O molds and unusual aspics. The name, as you may guess, places it in the 1970s, at the height of the Watergate scandal, so named for the office, apartment and hotel complex in D.C.

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UNIDENTIFIED NEWSCASTER: Five people have been arrested and charged with breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

G BULLARD: After President Nixon resigned in 1974, the nation was reeling. And so we ate cake. Newspapers spread the recipe for a green confection called Watergate cake.

JOSEPH RODOTA: The cake predates the salad.

G BULLARD: Joseph Rodota is the author of a book about the Watergate complex. Watergate cake was appearing in print about a month after Nixon resigned, if not before. People joked that the pistachio cake with whipped cream icing was called Watergate because it had a cover-up and was full of nuts. Sorry, but this kind of joke was easy to hear in the mid-'70s. The country had Watergate fever. The complex, once the height of luxury, became a tourist attraction. The Watergate cake name could've come from a food editor, a home cook or, as Rodota says...

RODOTA: It could've been a Democratic partisan³ who wanted to make sure the Watergate name lived on.

G BULLARD: There were rumors⁴ the dish came from the Watergate's restaurant, but there's no support for that. The origin is unknown, attributed at times to a friend of a friend in newspapers. The salad recipe started showing up one or two years later, first as pineapple pistachio delight. It likely took on the Watergate name because it was similar to the cake. By 1976, people were eating Watergate salad across the country. I called my mom, who was in rural Missouri at the time, and asked her about it.

JEANNE BULLARD: I'm Jeanne Bullard, Gabe's mom. I remember Watergate salad. It was one of those popular dishes somebody usually brings to a get-together⁵.

G BULLARD: A gelatin dessert named after the preeminent⁶ scandal of the Nixon administration may scream '70s, but the real roots of the Watergate salad run to the turn of the century. Susan Benjamin researches historic candy and sweets.

SUSAN BENJAMIN: You had a remarkable⁷ thing happen - instant gelatin. The gelatin enabled them to make things like marshmallows and other fun foods that you would take at picnics, who - that you would give for desserts.

G BULLARD: Benjamin found similar recipes dating as far back as 1913, which conveniently is the same year Richard Nixon was born. These dishes used sugar and gelatin and other ingredients that were new or hard to come by. With Benjamin in the studio, we brought out a bowl of fluffy⁸ green Watergate salad for a taste.

BENJAMIN: Straight out of the Nixon age. You can taste a kind of a pistachio-esque (ph). It's pistachio-esque.

G BULLARD: And it's not bad - soft, tangy, sweet but not too sweet. You can taste why this caught on and why it went away.

BENJAMIN: We are so fixated on eating right and not eating sugar and not really letting ourselves have fun.

G BULLARD: Just as the Watergate complex went from luxury to crime scene, the ingredients of the salad - marshmallows, pudding, canned pineapple - stopped seeming cutting-edge. The nation, in politics and palate, moved on.

For NPR News, I'm Gabe Bullard in Washington.

1 disappearance   

n.消失，消散，失踪

参考例句：

• He was hard put to it to explain her disappearance.他难以说明她为什么不见了。
• Her disappearance gave rise to the wildest rumours.她失踪一事引起了各种流言蜚语。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 partisan   

adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒

参考例句：

• In their anger they forget all the partisan quarrels.愤怒之中，他们忘掉一切党派之争。
• The numerous newly created partisan detachments began working slowly towards that region.许多新建的游击队都开始慢慢地向那里移动。

4 rumors   

n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷

参考例句：

• Rumors have it that the school was burned down. 有谣言说学校给烧掉了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Rumors of a revolt were afloat. 叛变的谣言四起。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 get-together   

n.(使)聚集；(使)集合

参考例句：

• Well,Miss Huang,we are planning to have a casual get-together.嗯，黄小姐，我们打算大家小聚一番。
• Will you help me prepare for the get- together of the old classmates?你能否帮我为这次老同学聚会做好准备工作？

6 preeminent   

adj.卓越的，杰出的

参考例句：

• Washington was recognized as the preeminent spokesman of American Negroes by 1895. 到1895年,华盛顿被公认为美国黑人的卓越代言人。
• He is preeminent because his articles are well written. 他的文章写得很漂亮,卓尔不群。

7 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

8 fluffy   

adj.有绒毛的，空洞的

参考例句：

• Newly hatched chicks are like fluffy balls.刚孵出的小鸡像绒毛球。
• The steamed bread is very fluffy.馒头很暄。