That's my jam!

February 24, 2023 4:00 AM

Artist Stacy Nguyen, while making a tomato and onion jam, "wondered: What is jam? What makes something authentically jam?" and learned about the definitions of jam, jelly, curd, preserves, conserves, fruit butter, chutney, confit, and marmalade, then decided "dude, this information would make a good infographic." and made a fun "Fruit-in-Jars 101" graphic. Graphic is near the end of the post, after the recipe.

Nguyen writes: "I based my definitions around what is the most commonly accepted definition in the U.S. There are slight deviations for Brits (much like how our cookie is their biscuit), but on the whole, it’s in the general vicinity."


Unfortunately, the image does not have a text description for accessibility, so here is my textual image description:

"Fruit-in-Jars 101"

Each item is a labelled jar.

Jam: "crushed fruit pieces in gelled juice" (tiny strawberries, red background)

Jelly: "gelled fruit juice" (loosely spaced dots, red background)

Curd: "citrus spread made with eggs" (eggs and citrus slices, yellow background)

Preserves: "chunks of fruit in gelled juice" (medium-sized strawberries, red background)

Conserves: "whole fruit in gelled juice" (big strawberries, red background)

Fruit butter: "fruit paste" (densely packed dots, red background)

Chutney: "spiced fruit relish" (tiny strawberries and irregular small splotches, red background)

Confit: "whole fruit preserved in sugar" (big strawberries, white background)

Marmalade: "citrus rinds in gelled juice" (citrus slices, yellow background)

posted by brainwane (28 comments total)

She has a tomato?
posted by biffa at 4:46 AM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

The big difference between British and American English is “jelly,” right? Do British people even have a name for congealed fruit juice, or is that too pointless for them to name or eat? (I will confess to not being a fan of jelly, which just tastes like sugar most of the time.)
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:48 AM on February 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is very very cool. It even makes me want to try to make tomato and onion jam, even though I don’t have the time or skills or jars for it, and have no idea what I’d eat it on since we rarely have good “crusty bread” around.

It does leave me with two questions, though:

1 - is this chart available as a print or a poster? I think I may need it

and

2 - if a confit is “whole fruit preserved in sugar” then what is duck confit?
posted by Mchelly at 4:51 AM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

The big difference between British and American English is “jelly,” right? Do British people even have a name for congealed fruit juice, or is that too pointless for them to name or eat? (I will confess to not being a fan of jelly, which just tastes like sugar most of the time.)

We don't eat it really. There are some specific things that are the same as a US style jelly that we also call jelly, such as "crab apple jelly", "medlar jelly", "quince jelly" but otherwise it's not something we commonly have at all and none of those are as sweet as regular jam. For us, jelly mainly means something set with gelatine rather than pectin.
posted by plonkee at 5:00 AM on February 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

Berries can make curd, not just citrus.
posted by biffa at 5:07 AM on February 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

But then what's a relish?
posted by Easy problem of consciousness at 5:49 AM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

But then what's a relish?

I was going to say that a relish was a blander chutney, but I see that that's circular, because she says that a chutney is a spiced fruit relish.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:56 AM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

It doesn't address sweetening. Except for chutney, all the rest typically have sugar (or a substitute) added.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:00 AM on February 24, 2023

"confit"
It comes from the French verb confire "to preserve." So you are preserving whole fruit in sugar or duck meat in fat.
Ducks are a very fatty beast, (no judgement,) which when rendered off, can be used to not only cook the meat, but to preserve it in a jar.
posted by bitslayer at 6:24 AM on February 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

You can confit a lot of things - tomatoes, onions, garlic, other meats. I think of it as just meaning “preserving in fat,” so in the category of this infographic (fruit in jars) specifying whole fruit makes sense.
posted by Miko at 6:28 AM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Good infographic, but my brain wants jelly, marmalade, jam, preserves and conserves listed in sequence, in that order, because each is a variation using gelled fruit juice as a base. The overall sequence that makes most sense to me is: jelly, marmalade, jam, preserves, conserves, confit (color 1); fruit butter, curd (color 2); chutney (color 3).

(Fruit-in-jars is my plate of beans this morning, apparently.)
posted by LooseFilter at 6:43 AM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Shower thoughts from ^the Cookie Monster: "Surely if tomatoes are fruit, then that makes ketchup a jam!"
posted by JHarris at 6:46 AM on February 24, 2023

Where is the compote???

A question that I often ask.
posted by toddforbid at 6:51 AM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Where is the compote???

Funnily enough, that was the first thing I asked. And compote (fruit that's lightly cooked and packed in sugar syrup) wasn't even in my vocabulary 'til my daughter started making it. But hoo wee, that's good stuff.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 7:04 AM on February 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

Compotes are a fun edge case - typically (although not universally) meant to be served immediately, rather than kept for longer term storage.

My edge case: mint jelly. Does it belong in here or is it also an adjacent off-branch?
posted by EvaDestruction at 7:12 AM on February 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

Jelly has to be clear in my world. You should be able to see through the jar (in principle---some absorb so much light as to be impractical, like grape or pomegranate jellies). Anything that is a gelled clear sweet syrup is jelly. Mint, wine and sherry all make fine jellies.

On the other hand, a cloudy "jelly" is just a jam with pretensions.
posted by bonehead at 7:25 AM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've always used the line between true jam and preserves and other things as jams are formed from a pectin gel base, while preserves are not true pectin gels, but thickened by reduction. A jam has enough sugar and acid to get the pectin gel to form. Jams are very high sugar and high on the acid scale too. They're suitable for long preservation at room temperature because they're very difficult media for molds to get a start on.

Preserves are not thickened this way, but are viscous because they are mostly composed of a paste of mashed fruits. Further differentiation of preserves and conserves and compotes and even fruit butters is done by texture and ratio of processed of whole and mashed fruits, the amount of grinding, sieving and heat reduction the fruit has been through, and the amount of sugar used. Preserves and butters etc... are all less long-lived than jams and jellies, as their acid and sugar contents are more conducive to microcosms getting started on them.
posted by bonehead at 7:35 AM on February 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

And marmalade is simply a special kind of jam made with bitter peel.
posted by bonehead at 7:40 AM on February 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Plonkee on Britjelly: "We don't eat it really".
Sort of agree but to "crab apple jelly", "medlar jelly", "quince jelly" add red-currant jelly and bramble jelly as standard supermarket staples as well as rowan jelly and hawthorn jelly for DIY forager types. I _can_ and have made all of these but my thrifty heart bleeds that a modest portion of muslin-strained jelly yields a larger quantity of roughage that goes direct to the compost rather than stimulating my microbiome. Bramble jam, with integral lumps and often cut with apples, is my preferred.
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:00 AM on February 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

I guess jelly made from flowers is on the same branch as mint.
posted by Mitheral at 9:08 AM on February 24, 2023

And in Portuguese "marmelada" is quince paste, so that belongs in here somewhere.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 9:23 AM on February 24, 2023

I knew there was a jelly that I did eat. Redcurrant jelly! I think of nearly all of those as accompaniments to a savoury dishes rather than interchangeable with jam.
posted by plonkee at 9:51 AM on February 24, 2023

I make a lot of jam, preserves, marmalades etc and I just give them random classifications. There is so much variation between countries and languages it’s just not worth the hassle to try and get it “right”. Especially when the name is also pretty much an ingredients list. If I say have some orange lavender jam you already pretty much know you’re getting something that would probably be a marmalade. I make a lot of spicy tomato jam but would never call it a chutney ever though technically it could be called that.
posted by misterpatrick at 9:53 AM on February 24, 2023

There's a delicious... fruit butter? called mostarda bolognese that's made around Bologna from quince, pears, and prunes. It's the most fantastic, uh, fruit butter I've ever tasted. It has nothing to do with mustard as we know it in the US. I yearn for it.
posted by goatdog at 10:01 AM on February 24, 2023

WHAT ABOUT COMPOTES.
posted by Grandysaur at 8:03 PM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

I defer, quite naturally, to the 'experts' on these matters.... here... here... here...

Many people make the assumption that canning is easy (NOTE: it is a long process!) and that all you have to do is 'boil something until you can put it in jars'. There is little common sense associated with preserving from lots of people. Theresa May is not immune! Here.
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 8:54 PM on February 24, 2023

Legal definitions of jam and jelly.
posted by eye of newt at 4:23 PM on February 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thought we covered it up thread, compotes aren’t (necessarily) preserves.
posted by Miko at 8:02 PM on February 27, 2023