To properly explain why I subjected myself to the Belle Meade frozen tomato, I first need to tell you about good goo. It’s a dish that reached my family in the late 1960s, when my grandmother Bettye Jo Walker Eaves was a high school secretary in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She was also president of the school district’s secretaries association, and at an association meeting, a colleague once brought a light and colorful dessert. My grandmother got the recipe, and when she made it herself, her children (including my mother) approved. A tradition was born.
It was Bettye Jo who dubbed it “good goo.” Nobody remembers what that other secretary called it, though my mom thinks it might have been “dump salad.” If that’s true, then I understand why it was changed. After all, when she was a girl my grandmother added an “e” to the end of her first name so that she could stand out from the other Bettys in her class. A woman like that was never going to sully her recipe box with “dump salad.” Not when she could opt for something charming and alliterative instead.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that I haven’t explained what good goo is. That’s because I know it might not be for you. The first (and only) time my husband tasted it, the night before our first Thanksgiving together, he put his head under the faucet of my Brooklyn kitchen sink. Almost 20 years later, he still shudders at the memory.
But there’s no sense in further delay, so here are the ingredients: Equal parts cottage cheese and Cool Whip, a packet of lime Jell-O powder, a cup of pineapple chunks (strained), and a few handfuls of walnut pieces. You mix the cottage cheese, Cool Whip, and Jell-O powder until they’re reasonably smooth, then you stir in the nuts and the fruit. You let it chill in the fridge for a few hours, and then voila, you’ve got a slightly sweet treat.
Or at least it’s a treat to me. I love the citrusy flavor, and I love the texture, soft with a little crunch from the walnuts. I also love the variations. If you’re feeling whimsical, you can substitute other Jell-O flavors, replace the pineapple with mandarin orange slices, or use pecans instead of walnuts.
Again, I appreciate that you may not be interested. You didn’t grow up eating good goo. You can’t remember the 70s-era Tupperware bowl that my mom used to put it in, and you don’t remember coming home to eat a big bowl of it after portraying an elf in the Chattanooga Christmas parade of 1993, when it rained the whole time and “Feliz Navidad” was the only song on the cassette tape they supplied for Santa’s float. Without those memories, I know good goo might seem gross. And I know it’s not just my husband who thinks so. Everyone I’ve ever told about the recipe has seemed, at best, confused.
I was similarly befuddled when I learned about the frozen tomato, a dish that is closely associated with Nashville’s Belle Meade Country Club. I’ve heard about it from at least five Nashvillians who grew up around here, and in 2003 the influential Southern writer Julia Reed even gave it a loving tribute in The New York Times. Reed includes the recipe, which involves pureeing tomato juice, mayonnaise, cottage cheese, cream cheese, pineapple, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, and a raw, chopped onion. That mixture is frozen until it becomes something like sorbet, and then it’s served on a bed of lettuce, with a dollop of mayo on top.
Like good goo, this concoction may horrify people who haven’t tried it before. A mouthful of raw onion, pineapple, cottage cheese, and hot sauce sounds like a punishment inflicted by an older brother. But the frozen tomato, which the Belle Meade Country Club has been serving since at least the 1960s, has ardent fans. I called Colby Mitchell, the club’s director of food and beverage, to ask if it was still on the menu, and he told me he could never take it off. “It’s a sacred dish,” he said. “People order it as part of the salad plate, and people order it a la carte.” (The “salad plate,” by the way, includes a canned pear stuffed with cream cheese, date bread served with butter or cream cheese, and finger sandwiches filled with chicken salad or pimento cheese.)
Mitchell added that for older members, the frozen tomato is almost synonymous with their dining experience. I heard the same thing when I asked a local who’s been a member for decades. They admitted it was an acquired taste, but they said they enjoyed it.
In fact, within the country club’s walls, passion for this dish runs so deep that it’s even got its own scandal. My source said that while the recipe might be connected to Nashville, there’s reason to believe it originated at a Memphis country club whose chef then came to work at Belle Meade. Hesitant to create unpleasantness, she declined to comment on the record.
Given its reputation, I decided to give the frozen tomato a go. I followed Julia Reed’s recipe, which my source confirmed was accurate, adding everything except the red food coloring she recommends to make it resemble a ripe tomato. Once it was frozen, I was struck by how beautiful the dish was, pale pink and delicate. With an open mind, I took a bite.
After chugging some juice, I forced myself to have a second taste. There wouldn’t be a third. The raw onion was off-putting enough, but there was something about the frozen-yet-still-oily mayonnaise that made my body revolt.
It’s possible the country club does it better, though I may never know. With apologies, Mitchell explained the club doesn’t allow press onto the premises. I considered asking my source to smuggle me in, but I decided I’m happy to remain ignorant. I prefer understanding the frozen tomato as something that’s so deeply ingrained in the history of a particular place that outsiders will never comprehend it.
Which is fantastic! That makes a dish even more special. Who cares if I don’t like the frozen tomato? It’s isn’t for me: It’s for the people who have threaded it into their culture. Meanwhile, I’ve got good goo to fuel my own dining lore, all the way down to the way it got its name. I don’t need anyone else to savor it. Bettye Jo did. My mom does. I do. That’s enough.
In fact, after I tossed the rest of the frozen tomato, I whipped up a batch of good goo and treated myself to a bowl. I loved every spoonful.
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