Lime-Pineapple Cheese Mold | Retro Recipe

After I made a cranberry gelatin mold last year around this time (see Cranberry Gelatin Mold | Retro Recipe), Yankee art director Lori Pedrick told me about a holiday gelatin mold that’s made with lime gelatin, crushed pineapple, and a blend of cream cheese and cottage cheese. Affectionately known in her family as “Lime Slime,” she said it’s one of those dishes that some people love to eat, while others love to hate it (gelatin molds have a way of doing that), but good or bad, it’s tradition. Curious, as always, I asked for the recipe.

Technically, Lime Slime isn’t the dish’s real name (it’s Lime-Pineapple Cheese Mold), and Lori’s recipe doesn’t come from New England, but I’m sure more than a few of you recognize its creamy green hue. The Pedrick family version hails from a 1979 New Jersey church cookbook, and Lori’s mom said that she adapted the recipe to use at holiday family dinners after her mother passed away in the late 1980s. Lori’s grandmother had always served a pepper cabbage side dish at holiday dinners (“I was not too fond of that dish” says Lori’s mom), so when the opportunity presented to replace it with something new, she turned to the Lime-Pineapple Cheese Mold. The mold is simple enough to make — just dissolve a box of lime gelatin in a cup of boiling water and chill until slightly thickened, then fold it in with the rest of the ingredients, mix well, chill, and serve! Speaking of those “other ingredients,” here they are, before the folding begins. A dazzling display of textures, colors, and…well, cheeses.

With the gelatin mixed in, I grabbed one of my many vintage fluted tube pans and filled it up.

After a night in the fridge, the finished gelatin mold (with just a bit of wiggling) came out with a satisfying plop onto the plate. If you do this yourself and end up with some ragged edges, a bed of lettuce or cranberry garnish helps make things table-ready. You may also want to rub a small amount of oil onto the plate before inverting the mold. This helps should you need to “move” the mold into place, as I did. Here it is, relaxing in the Yankee editorial office surrounded by mocked-up covers for a future issue. I figured we should at least surround the mold with Lori’s work-in-progress, since the recipe was hers.

Fragrant from the lime and pineapple, the mold certainly smelled pleasant, and a small bite proved that yes, it does indeed refresh the palate, but I probably won’t be bringing it to my family’s holiday table anytime soon. As of yet, we are not a molded salad people.

So how about your family? Do you have a molded gelatin salad recipe some people hate to love and others love to hate? Let us know! And in case these photos have you salivating, here’s the recipe. If you make your own, remember to share the results with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

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