Most American 'recipes' aren't really recipes, are they? They're assembly instructions.

[MaMight]

I've just found a recipe for Pineapple Upsidedown Cake; ingredients list - 1X plain cake donuts, 1X can pineapple slices.

I suspect there must be a massive swathe of American cooking that I have yet to discover.

(And 'pie filling' is not an ingredient.)

(And neither is 'pizza sauce'. WTF?)

anyone who needs a recipe to make a bake out of canned tuna and mushroom soup really would be better off going to a diner.

Mind you, the only time I've been offered Jello salad (thawed diced frozen veg embedded in lime flavor jello) was in Canada.
Anyone come across worse?

Orange Half Muffins

Ingredients:
oranges
instant muffin mix
tin foil.

Yum!

Omg Grimma that is revolting.

I dare you to google 'jello salad' - some of the 'recipes' are worse (warning, may include cottage cheese. Blurgh)

Oh sweet lord.

Celery.

Olives.

Cheese.

In lime jelly.

But...

... why?

From now on, every time I need cheering up I am going to google image search jello salad.

I want to look away but I can't.

Apparently it is also known as congealed salad. Well that makes it sound much more delicious.

What is 'cool whip'? And what is 'fluff' in a kitchen ingredient context?

Yes, that's normal food in Canada. I don't mind fruit in jello, but veg is a bit gross.

Lots of allrecipes.com recipes have 'yellow cake mix' as an ingredient.

cool whip is mayo
and fluff to me would refer to marshmellow fluff which is like a spreadable marshmello mmmm yummy

Cool Whip is not mayo. It is a dessert topping along the lines of whipping cream.

here actually not mayo, actually is cream

Oh good - find it and link!

and lol @ 'yellow cake mix'.

This looks niiiiice!

What were the lettuce leaves supposed to be?

This is so weird - was having a discussion about why American recipes are so strange with a friend today. We didn't get to the bottom of it - she's from Louisiana and says she did eat jello salad and meat loaf a lot as a child though has now embraced a more European approach.

I quite often google for recipes when I have a particular ingredient in the fridge and am continually baffled by what come up. There's a real tendency to use canned soup and crackers where you'd least expect it.

HopeFTB - that site is hillarious.

'Cool Whip is not mayo. It is a dessert topping along the lines of whipping cream.'

It's Angel Delight, not mayo.

And anyone who thinks American food is revolting and then eats black pudding or any one of the number of utterly minging, tasteless grub that passes for British food is beyond redemption, anyhow.