[Sca-cooks] Synonym Assistance
Antonia Calvo
ladyadele at paradise.net.nz
Wed Sep 10 14:55:30 PDT 2008
Lilinah wrote:
> I wrote:
>> Yerasimos uses the French gelee (literally jelly) in a number of
>> places.
> (SNIP)
>> The one i'm having trouble with is the application of gelee to Paluze.
>> This is a dish made of fruit juice, sugar, and wheat starch, cooked
>> until thick, then poured onto a marble slab to set, then cut into
>> pieces. Descriptions in other sources say it is chewy, and make it
>> sound as if it's almost like fruit leather, but not so tough.
>>
>> I know that the English often say "jelly", where we USAmericans would
>> say jello, but that's a brand name; it's clearly not gelatin, since no
>> gelatin is involved; and i don't want to say fruit leather, because it
>> isn't quite.
>>
>> For the moment i have "fruit gel", which isn't quite right either.
>
> And Antonia responded:
>> Sooo... what's wrong with just calling it a jelly?
>
> Jelly means different things to English speakers in different places.
> I am guessing that since you're in New Zealand, you lean toward the
> British form...
>
> In the US where i am, jelly is a relative of jam. Juice and sugar are
> cooked to a soft spreadable state with enough pectin to set up a bit,
> like jam but without the pulp. Can't be cut into pieces.
>
> As far as i understand, in Britain jelly is what we in the US call
> jello, a semi-solid jiggly translucent sweet dish made with a base of
> gelatin (i suppose one could also use agar, for something that won't
> melt in heat) sugar, and, theoretically, fruit juice. I would not
> describe jello as chewy, since it dissolves in one's mouth.
Actually, in the Anglosphere, jelly is _both_ of those things. You have
to divine which one from context.
> Neither form of jelly is like the item in question, which is cooked
> down longer than US jelly, and is somewhat chewy and seems to be, mmm,
> flatter, than jello/jelly, although not as flat, dry, and tough as
> fruit leather.
Which sounds like a kind of sweet called a "fruit jelly"-- which is
fairly solid, but not quite as chewy as Turkish delight.
--
Antonia di Benedetto Calvo
-----------------------------
Habeo metrum - musicamque,
hominem meam. Expectat alium quid?
-Georgeus Gershwinus
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