All I Needs Is Lime Jell-O

[Subdeacon Joe]

A culinary delight 

 

 

 

 

[Alpo]

To the tune of Pop goes the weasel

 

Above the babble of Dis-Con II

A young pro was heard to bellow

The sexiest thing in all of the world

Is a bathtub of lime jello

[Alpo]

I saw the problem immediately.

 

They used soda water.

 

Soda water is called soda water because it has baking soda in it. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. Sodium. Salt. Soda water is salty.

 

He should have used seltzer.

[Subdeacon Joe]

6 hours ago, Alpo said:

I saw the problem immediately.

 

They used soda water.

 

Soda water is called soda water because it has baking soda in it. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. Sodium. Salt. Soda water is salty.

 

He should have used seltzer.

 

Good point!

 

I've no experience with either one so it didn't cross my mind. 

[Subdeacon Joe]

I just re-watched it several times and couldn't read the label.  I know that he says soda water, but many people use that for any sparkling water.  Much like in some place people say "coke" to mean every soda pop except maybe RC Cola.

 

And, thinking about it, there isn't really enough of it  in there to make a difference. 

 

He should have used beet kvass. And sauerkraut juice instead of lemon juice. 

[Alpo]

The bottle he had was Polar brand soda water. I spotted that because I drink Polar Seltzer.

 

Store brand soda pop, the way you tell which is which is the color of the label. Red is normally cola, brown is normally root beer. And blue is selzer. But for some damn reason they put soda water in light blue. And I have accidentally bought that a time or two, because they not only put it in almost the same color but they put them right next to each other. "It's not a beverage, it's a mixer." Yeah, phooey.

 

Polar has at least a dozen flavors of water. And they all have a different colored label. And like the store brand soda, they put soda water in a "almost the same color blue" label. I have picked it up and put it back a time or two.

 

Heck, you don't even have to watch it. Just look at the picture. Underneath the red rectangle you can easily see what he has. Polar club soda.

[Subdeacon Joe]

I just re-watched it several times and couldn't read the label.  I know that he says soda water, but many people use that for any sparkling water.  Much like in some place people say "coke" to mean every soda pop except maybe RC Cola.

 

And, thinking about it, there isn't really enough of it  in there to make a difference. 

 

He should have used beet kvass. And sauerkraut juice instead of lemon juice. 

 

Per ChatGPT in answer to my question about if it really was an Eastern European concoction,  even though I couldn't find anything about it using Google:

 

Short answer: both yes and no, but mostly no in the way people imagine it. Sparkling borscht sits in that curious culinary borderland where Old World tradition got run through a mid-century American soda siphon.
Let’s unpack the beet-stained evidence. 🥣✨
🥬 What is traditional borscht?
Borscht (борщ) is a family of beet soups from across Eastern Europe, especially associated with:
Ukraine (often considered the cultural homeland of classic borscht)
Poland
Russia
Lithuania
Belarus
Traditional versions include:
Hot savory beet soup with cabbage, potatoes, and meat
Clear sour beet broths
Cold summer borscht (like Lithuanian šaltibarščiai)
Fermented beet drinks (kvass-based soups)
Notice something: sour, fermented, chilled versions already existed. That detail matters.
🫧 The “sparkling” part: where things get suspicious
In Eastern Europe, carbonation itself was not foreign. Fermented beverages naturally fizz a little. Beet kvass can develop mild effervescence from fermentation. So:
👉 A lightly fizzy beet drink or soup-adjacent beverage? Plausible.
👉 A deliberately carbonated, soda-like “sparkling borscht”? Not traditional.
There is no strong historical record of households in Kyiv or Warsaw serving intentionally carbonated beet soup as a classic dish.
🇺🇸 Enter mid-century America: the Age of Aspic and Optimism
The real rise of “sparkling borscht” comes from 1950s–1960s American food culture, when companies were convinced carbonation improved nearly everything.
This was the era of:
gelatin salads containing seafood
mayonnaise-based “party molds”
canned convenience cuisine experiments
soda siphons treated like kitchen magic wands
Food companies and magazines experimented with:
carbonated soups
sparkling tomato juice
fizzy fruit salads
and yes… sparkling borscht
These recipes appeared in promotional materials aimed at:
Jewish-American audiences nostalgic for Eastern European foods
cocktail-party culture craving novelty
The result was essentially borscht reimagined as a cocktail mixer or canapé soup.
Think less grandmother’s samovar, more suburban cocktail hour with chrome barware.
🧾 Why it felt authentic
The idea wasn’t totally invented from thin air because:
Cold borscht already existed.
Sour beet flavors pair well with carbonation.
Fermentation and fizz are culturally adjacent concepts.
So marketers took a real culinary lineage and added bubbles like a Hollywood remake adding explosions.
🧠 Culinary verdict
Claim
Truth level
Sparkling borscht is ancient Eastern European tradition
❌ Mostly myth
Fizzy fermented beet drinks existed
✅ Yes
Americans commercialized carbonated borscht
✅ Very much yes
It reflects mid-century food experimentation
✅ Absolutely
🍸 The poetic summary
Traditional borscht is a farmhouse soup shaped by winters, soil, and patience.
Sparkling borscht is what happens when that soup gets invited to a 1961 cocktail party and someone hands it a soda siphon and a tiny umbrella.
If you’d like, I can also show you an actual period recipe for sparkling borscht (they are gloriously strange) or explain how close it actually tastes to something legitimately Eastern European.

 

 

 

 

Fermented sour soups (medieval Eastern Europe)
        ↓
Kvass-based borscht (18th–19th century)
        ↓
Cold & sour Jewish/Eastern European variants
        ↓
American mid-century gadget enthusiasm
        ↓
 Sparkling Borscht (1960s cookbook oddity)

 

 

 

 

[Subdeacon Joe]

39 minutes ago, Alpo said:

Red is normally cola, brown is normally root beer. And blue is selzer. But for some damn reason they put soda water in light blue. And I have accidentally bought that a time or two, because they not only put it in almost the same color but they put them right next to each other.

 

Safeway buttermilk has light brown labels on the carton. It uses a dull mustard yellow in the 1% milk. They put them next to each other. In the lighting in the case they look almost the same.