Of course, we have potato and pasta salads. Those are mostly potatoes or pasta, along with other ingredients, and the mayonnaise forms the base of the dressing, which the solids are tossed in. That photo just looks straight up like the whole thing is a brick of mostly mayo.

It was because aspics were meant to 'contain' stuff, not just be gross, savory Jell-O. Like, a traditional aspic salad would have various fruits suspended in it.

I think when gelatin became common in grocery stores, people were just all about the novelty. If you read cookbooks from the 50s that have these recipes in them, you see a commonality — people were just chuffed as chips that they could make a cake that jiggles lol.

Solid soup defijitely must have sounded sci fi hack in the 50s