If Americans call jam jelly, what do they call jelly?

Question

Hey Whitney you CLOWN! I am not English (Australian) and no one is criticising Americans, it is just a question!!!!!

Calm down and take one of your anti-sensitive pills.

Answer 1

Sorry, mate -- in America we do have jam, and call it that. Fruit-based spreads to put on toast comes with four names on this side of the Pacific:

Jam consists of pieces of fruit cooked with sugar and usually some kind of thickening agent (typically pectin). Strawberry, peach, apricot, raspberry and other flavors are popular. (Greengages and damsons are virtually unknown here, more's the pity, and therefore so is jam made from them, unless we get a crop of fresh greengages and make homemade jam. In the stores, we rarely see red plum jam, but when we do, it goes quickly in this household.)

Preserves are, for all practical purposes, exactly like jam. Initially (and in some small parts of the country, this usage is still in place) preserves were made with larger pieces of fruit or whole fruits, but this is only practical with smaller fruits such as cherries, strawberries, and in some cases apricots. The degree to which this usage has fallen into disuse can be observed by the most popular form of preserves sold in the US: apricot-pineapple. (Yes, the pineapple is in small chunks.)

Jelly is jam that has been sieved, filtered and clarified before cooling. The most popular variety of jelly in the US is grape, made from the Concord grape (a different species from the European wine grape), though many other varieties of jelly are available. In effect it's a clear, spreadable candy; if you sorted out the visible pieces of fruit from jam and were left with the clear, syrupy stuff between the fruity bits, that's pretty close to US jelly. Not my favorite thing to put on toast, but my son would never have survived without grape jelly to put on his peanut butter sandwiches (what Yank kids grow up eating instead of Vegemite).

Marmalade is essentially the same thing in America as it is in England (I'm not sure about Australia). In the US and England, if you slice a citrus fruit into tiny pieces, peel and all, and then cook with sugar (and pectin) till it makes a wonderful, fragrant, tart, sweet, bitter and all-around wonderful topping for toast, muffins, or (US) biscuits -- well, you can tell by now that I like marmalade a LOT. The key difference is that US marmalade tends, by and large, to be much sweeter and made with much finer slices of citrus than the British variety. The chief reason for this is that British marmalade uses Seville oranges, which are more bitter than the Valencia oranges used in US marmalade. I'm very fond of Robertson's brand marmalade, a brand from the UK that's regularly available in the US, and James Keillor & Sons is a Scottish firm that makes my favorite commercial marmalade, a Three Fruit spread with oranges, grapefruit and lemons. (I've made my own three-fruit marmalade and it was WONDERFUL.)

Now... if I went to an Australian's home and was served jelly, what would it be? (I *think* it's a variety of chilled gelatin-based dessert which is known in the US by the brand name Jell-O, but I'm not 100% certain.) Jell-O brand desserts are made with gelatin, a meat product derived from boiling bones (similar to aspic); this is distinct from pectin, which is a fruit and vegetable-based product. Apples, for example, are very high in pectin; I have added minced, peeled mild apples (the Golden Delicious variety are good for this) to marmalade to give it a little additional pectin, though I have also used commercially prepared pectin, especially in making pepper jelly (that would be chillies to you, and yes, hot chilli pepper jelly or jam is marvelous!)

One other comment I have to make... British film star Hugh Laurie is now appearing in a highly acclaimed TV series in the US, "House." He plays an irascible but brilliant US physician who heads a team of top-notch diagnosticians, including an Australian named Dr. Chase. At one point House gives Chase a hard time about his "stereotypical British reserve."

"I'm Australian," Chase sniffs.

"You put the Queen on your money -- you're British," House retorts.

(Me, I love the Aussies -- I am willing to believe, for the sake of argument, that somewhere in the world there's an Australian that I wouldn't consider an automatic candidate for my best mate. But I haven't met one...)

Now, shall we discuss biscuits? :-)

Answer 2

Jelly Jam

Answer 3

Don't really know what you are getting at. Jam is made of the whole fruit, whereas jelly is made from the juice of the fruit in question. It is as simple as that. Jam is called jam and jelly is called jelly by everyone who knows the difference. Or are you talking about something entirely different?

Answer 4

okay, I don't know if there is a difference between jam and preserves - I can't say that I hear too many people use the word jam at all here- preserves are the whole fruit with pectin and jelly is jelly- sugar and artificial and MAYBE some natural stuff.
If jam is something different than these two then I am not aware of it, but here it is generally preserves or jelly, though some don't distinguish and anything that has a fruit flavor that you spread on bread is jelly- I hear people calling preserves jelly all the time , but for them jelly is jelly too.

Answer 5

Now... if I went to an Australian's home and was served jelly, what would it be? (I *think* it's a variety of chilled gelatin-based dessert which is known in the US by the brand name Jell-O, but I'm not 100% certain.) Jell-O brand desserts are made with gelatin, a meat product derived from boiling bones (similar to aspic); this is distinct from pectin, which is a fruit and vegetable-based product. Apples, for example, are very high in pectin; I have added minced, peeled mild apples (the Golden Delicious variety are good for this) to marmalade to give it a little additional pectin, though I have also used commercially prepared pectin, especially in making pepper jelly (that would be chillies to you, and yes, hot chilli pepper jelly or jam is marvelous!)

Answer 6

Jelly

Answer 7

Jelly is a spread that is only made from the juice of a fruit.

Jam or Preserves is made from the whole fruit & has bits of fruit in it.

I "think" what you call Jelly we call Jello or Gelatain

Answer 8

I'm an American, and I know that jelly and jam are two different things! Jelly is made from juice, and jam is made from whole fruit - and incidentally is much tastier and has a better texture than jelly.
Okay?

Answer 9

It's not jelly. I have a VERY PICKY husband, and complained because we only had preserves in the house and he wanted grape jelly. A month later I asked him if he wanted PB&J he said I never bought the jelly. I showed him in the fridge and it was jam. I said what's the diff?

Apparently it's a different consistency. Jelly is clumpy and jam spreads smoother.

Tell me Is this picky or what?

Answer 10

A lot of us call jam preserves and jelly jelly

Answer 11

We have jam and jelly. As previously mentioned, they are 2 different things. Not everyone recognizes that, and jelly sometimes is used as a general word for fruit spread.