Okay, this whole Jello-salad thing from back in the day is just not my thing. I tend to associate Jello with sweet dishes, like Jello and fruit salad, or even Jello and cottage cheese. This recipe for Cardinal Salad is probably bright red as it uses both beet juice and diced beets. It’s unknown if they were cooked beets, but I assume as much, and they are likely not pickled beets. Pickled beets are great, plain cooked beets, not so much. I don’t know who thought it would be a good idea to mix Jello with all sorts of random other flavors, but I’d like to thank them for stopping.
Cardinal Salad
1 pkg lemon Jello
1 cup boiling water
3/4 cup beet juice
3 tbsp vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp onion juice
1 tbsp horseradish
1 cup diced beets
Gram's Recipe Box 
This does not sound good. Maybe it was a 50’s thing. Jello anyone?
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Just had a flash back to a nasty tomato jello thing my grandmother served. Vile stuff and the brownie topped with ice cream for dessert was even nasty. Even melting ice cream could not soften those brownies.
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There’s an icky “mystery recipe” I found and posted a while back that had tomato juice and jello and some other foul combination. Shudders!
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My sister made Cardinal Salad, and I loved it! It was different. But I think she also grated raw beets into it, too. I never liked Jello Salads as a kid, but I am starting to like them now.
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