Nailing jelly to a wall: is it possible? (2005)

dhosek 5 days ago |

I was a bit surprised to discover the whole jelly-jello language thing. I’d always assumed when people spoke of nailing jelly to a wall that they were talking about something jam-like, not jello-like. I’ve not done the experiments, but I would assume attempting the former would be much less successful.

OkayPhysicist 5 days ago | |

They also got it wrong in their explanation. To Americans, jelly is jam with the fruit bits filtered out, leading to a homogeneous spread. Jam has crushed fruit, giving it a thicker, uneven texture, and preserves are whole-ass pieces of fruit boiled down in syrup. Marmalade is jam with citrus rinds. As listed here, they are sorted in descending desirability for inclusion in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Windchaser 5 days ago | | |

> As listed here, they are sorted in descending desirability for inclusion in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Surely you mean ascending!

Preserves > marmalade & jam > jelly

I want maximal fruit flavor for combination with my peanut butter.

Which makes me consider other options. Peanut butter and banana is a classic, ofc, but should I try even-more-concentrated fruits? Fruit jerky? Dried mangos? But then the texture would be weird; probably have to chop up the dried fruit, first. Or what about making a fruit-based tea, then using that as the water for making the bread?

Or, hell, we could subvert the entire PB&J structure. Use strawberry fruit jerky as the "bread", and PB + ... banana? as the filling. (Considered various "bread" fillings, like crushed Ritz crackers. I dunno, I'd try it. Strawberry jerky, with a little peanut butter and crushed ritz crackers in between)

ofalkaed 4 days ago | | |

I use dried fruit, much less messy, you don't end up sticky. Raisins work very well, chopped dates are quite nice as well but a pain to apply so I generally buy whole dried dates and halve them. Sliced or chopped figs are quite good, apple rings are fantastic. Mango work fairly well as is but sometime are a bit tough, chopping is often a good idea. Chopped apricot is a favorite, cranberries were a disappointment, pineapple works well as does fresh chopped pineapple as long as you let it drain a bit before putting it on your sandwich. Sundried tomatoes and fresh sliced green pepper is better than one would expect.

Some good thin potato chips are a great way to add some crunch, I prefer Old Dutch Original, great on many sorts of sandwich.

Windchaser 4 days ago | | |

Ahhhh, I love this food experimentation and the food data. Of my friends, I'm the one coming up with weird combos and being like "try this!", and it gives me a splash of the warm fuzzies to find other experimenters.

I swear, if ever we get proper robot maids, I'm going to give mine a sandwich roulette wheel system, with different wheels for different ingredients. "What sandwich am I eating today? Surprise me! --> {Tuna, cantaloupe, malt vinegar, fried asian noodles}"

bigstrat2003 4 days ago | | |

This is very much a personal preference thing, I suppose. When I make a PB&J, I want no pieces of fruit whatsoever. Jam is acceptable but not preferred, while preserves are too chunky and I would just not make a PB&J at that point. Marmalade I do not use for anything because I find the bitter flavor to be extremely unpleasant.

ryanchants 4 days ago | | |

When making a PB&J, I want just enough to jelly to add a little flavor to the peanut butter. Which is why my dad always called them "choke sandwiches" when I made them.

walthamstow 5 days ago | | |

Jam can be smooth in Britain too, the cheap ones usually are. The opposite, with chunks of fruit, is conserve. In all my years of watching TV, I've never heard an American say the word jam, it must not be very popular compared to jelly.

OkayPhysicist 5 days ago | | |

Unless it's relevant to the conversation ("grab some strawberry jam when you're at the store, not the strawberry jelly"), Americans are also likely to use "jelly" as the catch all for the various "preserves meant for spreading". I guess that's kind of alluded to by my suggestion to put any of them on a peanut butter and "jelly" sandwich.

ghc 5 days ago | | |

Perhaps unsurprisingly, in New England jam seems more popular than jelly. The FDA regulates the labels...jelly is made from fruit juice, while jam is made from fruit chunks. The only jelly I routinely see is concord grape jelly. Jams are usually apricot, raspberry, or strawberry.

Given the number of small batch jams available at various farmers markets, my guess would be that for smaller farms, making jam is more practical than jelly.

bell-cot 4 days ago | | |

> ... for smaller farms, making jam is more practical than jelly.

Probably true? Unless they are cheating by buying bulk commercial (filtered) juice.

But if their customers prefer "I can see lots of fruit chunks in it" jam to jelly, they don't need other reasons.

abanana 5 days ago | | |

Regarding Britain, "conserve" used to mean posh jam, but nowadays it seems to be more of a marketing word - a brand trying to pretend they're posh, similar to how pretentious restaurants use French words for no obvious reason.

"Smooth jam" here in the UK is sometimes labelled as jelly, like this kind of thing:

https://www.ocado.com/products/tiptree-blackberry-jelly/1053...

nephihaha 4 days ago | | |

"Jeelie" is the old Scots term for jam by the way, so "jelly" does/did have currency here.

matthewowen 4 days ago | | |

interestingly, i think there's also a u vs non-u thing here: jam is a u word, preserve is non-u

bigstrat2003 4 days ago | | |

Jam is more popular than jelly, in my experience, but (as OkayPhysicist said) many people use the word "jelly" incorrectly to mean any kind of fruit spread.

dhosek 4 days ago | | |

I think in colloquial American English, there’s a lot of mixing up of terms and most Americans (myself included) would just call all of these jelly.

paradox460 4 days ago | | |

Marmalade was originally just quince cheese, then jam, no citrus required

nephihaha 5 days ago | |

The traditional Scots for a jam sandwich is a "jeelie piece", which shows that the word (or a close relative) had some currency here.

seany 4 days ago | |

There's also the pectin vs gelatin, and temperature of the test. Some of the precursors of things like Tonkotsu broth (lots of chicken/pig feet) can be fairly firm at 20°c, and nearly solid at 10°.

facemelt2 4 days ago |

>How I sped up <important_tech_stack> by 2.8%

>something apolitical, filled with political bot comments

>ShowHN: an ai company you'll never hear of again

>NAILING JELLY TO THE GODDAMN WALL, !%#@ YEA (2005)

>why ai is bad

Keep it up HN <3

egypturnash 5 days ago |

This page is copyright 2005 by Graeme Cole. What are you allowed to do with it? Pfft. Anything within the realms of common sense, really. I don't want to prescribe rigidly what people can and can't do with it, so I've decided on a benchmark. It's this: you're allowed to do with this page anything you wouldn't mind me doing with your cat. So yes, you can photoshop it for comedy effect, you can copy bits of it for illustrative purposes and so on, but you can't steal it and pass it off as your own.

FiatLuxDave 5 days ago |

This vaguely reminds me of an old SPAM bouncing experiment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38292161

etothet 4 days ago |

But can you glue it? "Jelly" should be added here: https://www.thistothat.com

ofalkaed 4 days ago | |

The jelly/Jello in TFA is glue, gelatin is the same thing as hide glue and you can use grocery store gelatin the same way as you use hot hide glue. All the sugar and flavorings added to jelly/Jello would affect its properties as a glue but it should still work as a glue; set time will be slower and the bond weaker but I suspect it will work.

Edit: so if you want to glue it to something the easiest way is to just heat up what ever you want to glue it to high enough that it will just barely melt the surface of the block of Jello. Next easiest would be to use hot hide glue,it will reactivate the gelatin in the Jello and bond well to it and will be able to glue it to anything that hide glue will stick to.

cjs_ac 5 days ago |

Meta-study: How many times can you child submit a 'is this cliched saying physically possible?' experiment to a science fair before their teachers realise that they're taking the piss?

cactusplant7374 5 days ago |

Nailing anything to the wall depends on the properties of said thing.

not_a_bot_4sho 5 days ago | |

If you're going to quote Abraham Lincoln, you should at least give credit

cactusplant7374 4 days ago | | |

I didn't know this was a Lincoln quote. I just thought of it randomly. I suppose it's possible I read it when I was younger but I'm not a big reader when it comes to history.

migc 4 days ago | | |

If you're going to quote Abraham Lincoln, you should at least give credit

anfractuosity 4 days ago |

Maybe astronauts on the ISS could try a similar experiment ;)

mrhottakes 4 days ago |

Possible for me? Yes. For others? Not yet.

nephihaha 5 days ago |

Yes, but freeze it first.

Windchaser 4 days ago | |

the wall? or... like, the nail?