The Candle Salad Isn't As Naughty As It Looks

If Urban Dictionary had a picture book, this vintage dish's photo would be proudly displayed. The candle salad is wrong for so many reasons — where do we start? While the name seems innocent enough, the many iterations of the candle salad progressively get naughtier and more unbelievable.

Candle salads were created during the 1920s when apparently no one was familiar with male genitalia. The fruit salad comprised of a plate of lettuce with a ring of pineapple on top as the base. Some recipes add a scoop of cottage cheese to the lettuce, for the protein, of course. A whole or half banana was inserted into the pineapple ring to keep it sanding up, and topped with a maraschino cherry skewered with a toothpick on the tip of the banana to resemble... the candle's flame.

Believe it or not, that was not enough innuendo for some home cooks who added a squirt of whipped cream or mayonnaise on top and down the banana to resemble exactly what you are thinking — dripping wax. Somehow, they still thought it looked like a candle.

Candle salads were made during the holidays when you could enjoy watching the whole family devour the banana directly across the table from you. While plenty of candle salad recipes are in print, none specify how you are supposed to eat it — fork and knife? Pick it up and eat with your hands?

The salad was thought to be a good recipe for children, encouraging them to eat more fruit and keeping childhood psychologists in business. So naturally, when the first specifically written cookbook for boys and girls was published in 1950, "A Child's First Cook Book" by Alma S. Lach, it included the easy-to-make and highly appropriate dish. Betty Crocker also saw it fit to incorporate the candle salad in the 1957 edition of "Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys and Girls," adding as a description, "It's better than a real candle because you can eat it."

Candle salads were popular between 1920 and 1960. However, the retro recipe still appears on Christmas tables in some cheeky households and bachelorette parties. Over the decades, variations of the OG banana candle salad have popped up, replacing the whipped cream on the tip with peanut butter or rolling the banana in nuts (we couldn't make this up). Talkshow host Ellen DeGeneres even featured the phallic-looking salad in an episode saying, "It's made with banana, and pineapple... and mistakes."