Actual thought I had in the shower!
Gelatin was originally and still often is derived from meat by-products, so wouldn’t it make more sense as a meat dish?
I looked it up, and it turns out that accounts of aspic (a savory gelatin dish) predate the earliest record of gelatin desserts by more than half a millennium!
Maybe the mid-20th-century meat Jell-O trend makes more sense than I thought
They should issue that as a challenge on a cooking contest show, it seems like something that would require a lot of skill and adaptability to nail first try
That being said, I will not be embracing any gelatin, it would squish and make a mess