The vocabulary

Words with a legal definition

Everything in this list has a meaning somebody can hold you to. Using one of these words on a label is a claim that the product meets the definition behind it, which is why the difference between jam and fruit spread is not a matter of taste or marketing.

• Jelly: made from fruit juice, no fruit solids. 21 CFR 150.140.
• Jam and preserve: made from fruit, crushed or in pieces. The same standard, 21 CFR 150.160.
• Fruit butter: fruit pulp cooked down, its own standard.
• Soluble solids: the dissolved content of the finished product, not less than 65 percent, by a method the regulation names.
• Group I fruits: a named list in the regulation, including raspberries, boysenberries, strawberries and grapes, which take a 47 rather than 45 part fruit minimum.
• Acidified food: a regulatory category under 21 CFR 114, with a filed process. Where a product lands relative to it is a determination, not an opinion.

Words that are description

The distinction is not pedantry and it is not about writing carefully. A word from the list above puts the product inside a standard with a ratio and a percentage attached; a word from this list describes what you made without claiming anything. Reaching for the regulated word because it sounds better on a jar is how a fruit spread ends up labeled as jam.

These are useful words and none of them is a claim. You can say them to another maker, write them in your batch log and use them to think with. What you cannot do is let one of them stand in for a word from the list above, because a reader of a label will take the regulated meaning whether or not you intended it.

• Brix: a scale for dissolved sugar, read on a refractometer. Close enough to soluble solids for these products to be used as a proxy.
• Set: the gel. Not a defined term, but the thing every test in this craft is testing for.
• Syneresis: weeping. The gel releasing liquid.
• Plumping: letting fruit take up syrup before the concentration rises, so it neither shrivels nor toughens.
• Sheet test, refrigerator test: the two tests that need no instrument.
• Headspace: the gap between the product and the lid. A quarter inch here, and that is published rather than conventional.

The one most often used wrongly

One word carries three meanings at once in this craft, and the gap between them is the single most common way a well-meant label goes wrong. It is worth knowing which meaning you are reaching for every time you use it.

Preserve. In normal speech it means any of these things. In the regulation it is the same standard as jam, and in the craft it means the fruit has held its shape. All three usages are in circulation and only one of them is on a label.

References