New Summer Drinks with Food Value

In the 1920s, Americans were mashing cakes of fresh yeast into their morning orange juice for the alleged health benefits, but gelatin drinks were a rare concept. Nevertheless, the yeast health fad may have served as inspiration when the Royal Baking Powder Company published and briefly promoted this 1929 pamphlet, touting the value of "shakes," "ades," and other drinks made with their gelatin. So it reads: "These Royal Gelatin drinks not only give sparkle and color to the table, and zest to the appetite—they furnish valuable protein nourishment in easily digested form." 

Featured recipes included Royal Malted Shake (fruit gelatin and malted milk mixed in a cocktail shaker) and Royal Egg Nog (raspberry or cherry gelatin shaken with two raw eggs). The pamphlet served to promote the new Royal Fruit Gelatin, introduced only five years prior; you can see the box in the collection here.

Gelatin drinks would find their popularity later, in 1939/1940 as an antidote to tiredness, and again in the '60s/'70s as a protein supplement intended to strengthen nails—despite the fact that both claims were variously refuted by the medical community and the Federal Trade Commission.