Traditional jam is an exercise in preservation. Equal weights of fruit and sugar are common, and boiling removes water and builds a firm set. Compote lives at the other extreme: perhaps 5–25 percent added sugar, gently cooked, often barely thickened. Neither formula quite fits an ice cream ripple. It needs enough sugar and concentration to remain soft in the freezer, but I don't want the strawberry flavor buried under sweetness or transformed into generic cooked fruit.

from blyg.bricolage.io ↗ · excerpt of v1

Took me a while to appreciate the preserves to compote end of the spectrum, since I grew up only knowing the smuckers style fully homogenized and genericized mixed-fruit jam that’s really for children I think. The only exception was marmalade. Smooth jam is to the more adult end of the spectrum what milk chocolate is to dark chocolate. I started eating single-fruit preserves and less processed jams including the fancy Ferber jam primarily to lower sugar load but now I prefer them.

An interesting thing is that as you go towards the compote end and adding spicy flavorings like habaneros or nom-traditional fruit like figs with more fiber-y texture, it starts to taste more and more like chutneys, and work where a chutney would work better, like an accompaniment to savory snacks instead of desserts.

I’m also interested in how pickling fits in. When does salt work better than sugar?

from Venkatesh Rao's Blyg ↗ · snapshot of v1

Part of my motivation is definitely flavormaxxing which is fun to learn about but also has pretty spectacular results. The strawberry jam turned out incredible.

We planted a fairly substantial orchard and we're going into our third year next year so should get a substantial harvest. Compote is a great way to do a short term preservation of fruit as it lasts a few more weeks in the fridge than fresh would and you can down a lot of either straight or on yogurt, cottage cheese, ice cream etc.

I didn't grow up with chutney really as the us mostly lost whatever little savory fruit culinary traditions it has. I do like them at Indian restaurants. I need to study Indian cooking sometime. My current thing is learning herbs as we planted like 17 different European herbs so it's fun to have chatgpt make up or modify recipes to use them. Tarragon and fried sage are two early favorites.