There’s nothing more comforting than a home-cooked meal of the foods you grew up with when you need it the most. In December 1964, after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Stockholm for his nonviolent struggle for civil rights, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. returned to Atlanta. Earlier that year, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, a bill he was instrumental in helping pass. Back home after a long and momentous year, his mother, Alberta Williams King, cooked his favorite foods. According to the book “Southern Food and Civil Rights” by Frederick Douglass Opie, that meal included ribs, collard greens, baked sweet potatoes, and, for dessert, quilly.
Quilly is similar to jello or ambrosia salad. It consists of whipped cream, chopped almonds, stale macaroon crumbles, marshmallows, and a can of fruit salad set in a ring of Jell-O. It was served with sugar wafers sticking out. Mrs. King theorizes that the wafers sticking out like a porcupine’s quills is the reason her children gave the dish the name “quilly.”
How to Make Quilly
The National Museum of African American History and Culture has preserved the dessert recipe that appears to be Martin Luther King Jr.’s mother, Alberta’s, invention. She started by blooming gelatin in cold water, then mixing it with boiling water and sugar. To this jello base she added her many ingredients: the whipped cream, chopped almonds, crumbled stale coconut macaroons, mini-marshmallows, vanilla or rum extract, and a can of fruit salad. All mixed, she let it set in a mold in the refrigerator. Then, she added the sugar wafers to create the quill effect. The resulting treat is a pleasingly gentle dessert similar to some of these vintage salads you may have forgotten about.
This bite of cool, calming nostalgia was necessary to Dr. King after his favorite meal. Nostalgic foods from your youth can be powerful; they have been shown to boost psychological resilience, a trait Dr. King exemplified in the face of much violence directed toward him and the movement he led. In fact, in the U.S., foods rooted in nostalgia have been making a comeback in the past few years. Whatever your quilly is, now is a good time to call home and get the recipe to make it for yourself.