It’s almost time for the fall harvest here at BRI headquarters, and there is so much fruit around these parts that there’s only one way to keep it all: make it into jam! Or jelly. Or preserves. Or fruit butters. Now we’re confused. What’s the difference between all of those anyway?

All of these ways to preserve fresh fruit for months on end to make it both sweeter and great on toast all involve very similar methods. To simplify the process, making a jam or jelly (or one of the others—please don’t make us lift them all every time) begins with boiling down fresh fruit until its incredibly soft, goopy, and saucelike, and adding sugar or another sweetener to make the taste more intense, but also as a preservative. Water is cooked out, which adds to the flavor intensity and increases shelf life. The addition of citric acid aids in tartness, and pectin is a jelling agent that makes jelly, well, jellylike.

The starting point of the fruit, and subtle changes in texture of the end products, are what differentiate jams from jellies from butters from marmalades from preserves.

• Jellies are made from strained fruit juice and come out smooth.

• Jams are made from crushed fruit and are generally chunky and have little bits of fruit and seeds that remain intact.

• Preserves use whole fruit (if it’s a small fruit, like berries), or large, rough chunks of fruit.

• Marmalade is just a type of jam—it’s a name reserved for citrus fruits only, usually oranges, and the peel is thrown into the mix, too.

• Fruit butters (apple butter, rhubarb butter) are made from stewed fruit. The fruit is cooked for a long time, until the natural sugars in the fruit caramelize, which make the end product thick, like butter.