cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/28480950

In 2015, Cookie Monster filmed a viral video titled “Simply Delicious Shower Thoughts with Cookie Monster” for the Mashable YouTube channel. In the video, he explores various New York City museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim, while pondering deep “shower thoughts” about food.

  • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
    36·
    1 day ago

    Ketchup is a fruit butter, not a jam.

    Cooked, pureed fruit with sugar and spices, no pectin. Not a jam

    • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      So to make ketchup, aka a fruit butter, we must first milk the tomatoes, then separate the cream, then churn the tomato cream, then separate the tomato buttermilk.

      I had no idea so much went into ketchup.

      • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 day ago

        Tomato butter is a little different, after you separate the tomato buttercream and add seasoning and vinegar, add back the tomato buttercream until the consistency is where you like it

      • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 day ago

        Not sure if joking so I’ll answer seriously…

        Like apple butter, or pear butter. Maybe it’s an Appalachian thing, I dunno. You chop up the fruit, let’s say apples, and slow cook them for a few hours. Then puree them, add cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, whatever, and a bunch of sugar. Can the results. We always used small mason jars that had been in the family for God only knows how long.

        Grandma wouldn’t use a blender, she was old school. She’d add all the ingredients together in a big stock pot, drop a silver dollar in the bottom, and stir for hours, until she couldn’t hear the coin move around anymore. I say she stirred for hours, but she’d “enlist” the help of the kids, and later, daughters-in-law, and eventually grandchildren. She was born in 1912, so I reckon it was just her way

        • Enkrod@feddit.org
          2·
          13 hours ago

          Oh shit, that sounds exactly like Lekvar or Powidl, that might point to a mostly eastern European, maybe German but more likely Slavic origin.

          • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
            1·
            11 hours ago

            So I got curious and went down the Wikipedia rabbit hole. Here’s the first paragraph from the apple butter article:

            The roots of apple butter lie in Limburg (Belgium and the Netherlands) and Rhineland (Germany), conceived during the Middle Ages, when the first monasteries (with large orchards) appeared. The production of the butter was a perfect way to conserve part of the fruit production of the monasteries[1] in that region, at a time when almost every village had its own apple-butter producers. The production of apple butter was also a popular way of using apples in colonial America, well into the 19th century.

            So yeah, apple butter has roots in Germany, at least for central Europe. However, other fruit butters have other origins, such as Lekvar and Powidi, as you mentioned. At the same time Latwerge and Apfelkraut were developing in Germany, monasteries in the British Isles were also developing apple butter as a preservation technique. It seems the tradition/technique developed in parallel as a communal way of preserving fruit.

            Since grandma’s recipe included a sweetener it likely has its roots in the British Isles, where honey would be added to the preserves as a sweetener. Her apple tree produced a fairly sour soft apple, which also would inform that decision. The pies were amazing