Jelly, Jell-o and Jam

So we were talking about sandwiches with friends (have you noticed how many of these blogs focus on food? So much of culture resides in cuisine!*). I was telling them about the good toasted cheese sammys we had at the Northumberland Cheese Farm café on a recent visit (just north of the Newcastle airport for those who want to go). In the States, of course, we call these "grilled cheese sandwiches"; here they are called "toasties".

And then I asked, have you ever tried grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? Their immediate reaction was "yewuuuuuu" because they were thinking jelly = jell-o! Now I admit, a peanut butter and jell-o sandwich would be pretty weird, especially if toasted (runny). (But then think of Kinsey Millhone of Santa Teresa,** who eats peanut butter and pickle sandwiches!)

A doormat produced by the Jell-o company as a pun
on its product name: in different color letters to
represent the flavors of the gelatin dessert

Language lesson:

American "jelly" = jam without the chunky parts

British "jelly" = American jell-o (gelatin)

But isn't there such a thing as jam without the chunky parts in England? Why yes, it's called "jelly" of all things: red current jelly, cranberry jelly, mint jelly, sweet chilli jelly, and bramble jelly (from the Tesco list). It turns out that the first three are considered savoury condiments and used quite differently from jam or American sweet jelly. Bramble jelly is sweet jelly like American jelly; seems it is the only one made as jelly rather than jam because the fruit is so intractable.

American English seems more precise because we have three different terms to differentiate jam, jelly and jell-o, while the English terms jam and jelly have to cover all three products. In both cases though, 'jelly' has to cover two different products: American jelly both sweet and savoury, and British jelly both gelatin and savoury jelly. This explanation rather goes beyond the 3-year-old discussion of these terms on Yahoo Answers, which is difficult to understand anyway because you don't know the nationality of who is answering.

To confuse things further, like American jelly beans (sweet), the English have expanded the term "jelly" to cover jelly babies, snakes, tots and squirms (sweet),  the candies called "jellies" (sweet), and the jelly used in cat food (savoury).

In retrospect, why did my friends immediately think of jell-o in a sandwich rather than bramble jelly, for example? Hmmm, sounds good. In fact, all the savoury jellys sound good. Must try them in peanut butter and jelly toasties...

* As Lévi-Strauss knew when he wrote "The Raw and the Cooked".
** Sue Grafton's private detective in her 'alphabet murder' novels. The story goes that Grafton hated her husband so much on their divorce that she decided to kill him, 26 times through the alphabet in her novels.