This article is adapted from the February 22, 2025, edition of Gastro Obscura’s Favorite Things newsletter. You can sign up here. In 2014, around Thanksgiving, talk-show host Ellen Degeneres showed her audience a photo of a mid-century American dish. “There’s something called a ‘Candle Salad.’ This is real,” she said, while the studio audience howled with laughter. “It is made with banana and pineapple … and mistakes. I tried it once. It was not my thing.” For the uninitiated, this “salad”—I’m using the term loosely here—would look right at home…
