My Mother’s 1930s Party Salad

In all my years at The New York Times, I never printed a recipe for commercially packaged, fruit-flavored gelatin salads—not until I wrote a nostalgic piece about my mother’s cooking. She was, many years ago, interviewed by a then-well-known and now defunct magazine called Liberty. The author called her “the best cook in town” and printed a few of her most admired recipes. My mother was a great bridge player, and when she entertained, one of her party dishes was a three-layere