What is the difference between compote and marmalade

Today, preserves are about more than just making it through the winter. Creating unusual flavor combinations is also part of the fun. Add a kick of heat, a touch of tartness, something boozy, herbal, or spiced, and preserves become a little more exciting. Store shelves these days offer a daunting array of small-batch products. But as you stare at the aisles of jellies, jams, conserves, and compotes, do you know what defines one type of preserves from another?

It all comes down to the kind of fruit that's used, the way the product is prepared, and the proportions of different ingredients.

Let's get into the nitty-gritty. Fruit is the star of the show here, and the first step to making any sort of preserves is selecting your fruit! Once you've got the right mix of perfectly ripe and just-slightly under-ripe fruit, you're good to go. Avoid overripe fruit, which will contribute overcooked flavors, leathery texture, and lack some of the pectin and acidity that are essential for good preserves.

Sugar's the backup singer, but your star can't last long on stage without her. Just like salt, sugar acts as a preservative. Sugar bonds with water, drawing moisture out of living cells, thus making the fruit inhospitable to microbes that can cause spoilage. Since water content correlates directly to shelf life, the efficiency of the jelly as a preserving agent depends on its concentration—thicker syrup aka: a jelly with higher sugar content , typically has less water content and is therefore less perishable.

Oh, and sugar also makes preserves deliciously sweet. Although regular table sugar is the typical go-to, other sweeteners like brown sugar, corn syrup, and honey can also be used. Ok, maybe we're stretching the metaphor a bit, but if fruit is the star and sugar's the backup singer, let's call pectin the Autotune of your jam or jelly concert.

Pectin keeps things together: it's a naturally occurring carbohydrate with thickening and gelling properties. Unlike gelatin and agar agar, pectin requires both heat and acid in order to gel. Commercially available pectin powder is often derived from apples, but many other fruits also contain high levels of pectin. Since different fruits have varying levels of natural pectin, the type of fruit you use and its ripeness will determine the amount of necessary additional pectin.

For example, preserves made with apples, quinces, plums, and blackberries typically do not need additional pectin—they sing right on key without the Autotune—while fruits like apricots, blueberries, and peaches usually do need a little help. If you're adding powdered pectin to your jam, it's best to whisk the pectin together with granulated sugar to prevent it from clumping and forming hard lumps. Acidity interacts with the pectin—naturally occurring or added—to create a gel.

This means that a bit of lemon, vinegar, or citric acid not only helps to balance your jam's flavor with a little tartness, it also helps create the characteristically spreadable texture of jellies, jams, and marmalades. The ideal pH for pectin gelation is between 2. Got it. The word marmalade comes from the Greek melimelon , which referred to quince that was stored in honey.

Marmalade today is a jelly that contains pieces of citrus rind and offers a balance of both sweet and sour, along with a slight bitterness from any pith present. Marmalade is one of the few preserves that does not require added pectin as citrus rinds already contain a large amount of the natural gelling agent.

Like jam, marmalade must contain 65 percent soluble solids. Imagine a savory jam that brings together the sweetness of fruit with the zip of spices and the tang of vinegar. Those three elements combined create a chutney , the popular Indian preserve made without pectin and that commonly includes dried fruit. Chutneys include much less sugar than most preserves, which makes them a more fitting condiment for savory and well-spiced Indian dishes.

Whole pieces of fruit are cooked down in sugar syrup without any additional thickeners i. Jelly is made from fruit juice, which is usually extracted from cooked, crushed fruit. That extraction process, which involves straining the fruit mixture through a fine mesh fabric, is also what makes jelly clear.

The resulting juice is then heated with sugar, acid, and oftentimes additional powdered pectin to get that firm, gel-like texture. That cranberry stuff you eat on Thanksgiving, the stuff that slides out of the can in one perfect cylinder, ridges intact? Definitely jelly. Next up we have jam , which is made from chopped or pureed fruit rather than fruit juice cooked down with sugar. Its texture is usually looser and more spoonable than jelly, with stuff like seeds or skin sometimes making an appearance think of strawberry or blueberry jam, for example.

Preserves contain the most physical fruit of the bunch — either chopped into larger pieces or preserved whole, in the case of things like cherry or strawberry preserves. Confit is a way of cooking and preserving fruit in a sweet syrup. The basic method for making sweet confit: Heat the cooking liquid and sugar until the sugar dissolves.

Your liquid can include sweet wine or port, if you like. This cooking time can be anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour, depending on the fruit you use and how large the pieces of fruit are. Sterilize some glass jars. Remove the fruit and put it into the sterilized jars. Add the syrup over the fruit in the glass jars. Store in your fridge. What do I eat with fruit confit? What is confiture? Simmer the fruit and sugar until the fruit is softened, from between 20 minutes and 60 minutes the time depends on the size of your fruit and your desired thickness for your confiture.

Add spices and flavourings according to your recipe, for example cinnamon, almond extract, etc. Add gelatin or pectin optional, depending on your recipe. Put in jars and let cool. What do I eat with confiture? Foods to eat with confiture: Hot meat such as a crispy duck leg, roast beef, pork belly, sausages, etc. Sweets such as ice cream, whipped cream, strawberry shortcake, cheesecake, etc.

Breakfast foods such as yoghurt, oatmeal or bacon and eggs to add a lively visual element. Really, the only limit to what foods you can eat with confiture is your imagination. What is jam? But what about the texture? Prep for jam ingredients. Cook your jam ingredients. Put your jam into the jars, remove air bubbles and wipe up any drips on the top of the jar. Put the sealing disc and lid on each jam jar and put them back into the water bath again follow the times in your recipe.

Let cool for a day. Get a real recipe and follow it. Add the lids and let your jam jars sit out for 24 hours. Put the jam jars in the freezer. If you put some in the fridge, it should keep for a few weeks.