Jam is much more submissive than jelly. One can spread jam on bread with little difficulty. It makes the transition from amorphous blob to uniform coating with ease.

Jelly is much more stubborn. A blob of jelly must be broken up into mini-blobs which are then broken further into mini-mini-blobs until something resembling-but-not-quite-exactly a uniform coating has been achieved. More often though, one tears a big hole in the bread while doing all this blob reduction. Then, one utters a few four-letter words, throws the jelly in the garbage and gets the jam out of the fridge, which is what one should have done in the first place.

There must be a reason why Welch's, Smucker's et al market both jam and jelly, but I've never understood why. Maybe the jelly is for masochists - or people who like having holes in their bread.

Bruce