Once given its trademarked name, Jell-O quickly became "America's Most Famous Dessert" with more than one million boxes sold every day by the late 1990s. Even more than apple pie or hot dogs, Jell-O epitomizes not just American cuisine, but America itself and has been one of its most enduring icons. Powdered gelatin, invented in 1845 by Peter Cooper, was one of the first convenience foods in America, making the arduous task of preparing gelatin from scratch—boiling calf's hoofs for hours—merely a matter of adding water to powder and leaving in a cool place to set. Not until the end of the century, however, did the concept of granulated gelatin catch on. In 1897, Pearl B. Wait invented a fruit-flavored gelatin, named Jell-O by his wife. Because of low sales, he sold the patent to Orator Francis Woodward in 1899 for $450. Woodward began his first advertising campaign in 1902, making...