I can buy name-brand grape or apple jelly for 99 cents a big-ass jar. The cheapest generic strawberry (or most any other fruit) brand is two and a half bucks for a little-ass jar.
Are grapes and apples so much more plentiful and common? I don’t know, I’ve never tried to count them.
Are grapes and apples easier to mush up into jelly?
Does jar ass-size matter?
Why?
Sir Rhosis
You might want to start with comparing the price of apples or grapes to the price of strawberries.
Haj
Okay, I’m not a fruitician–are they that more expensive? Why? Not as abundant?
Thanks for the answer. The question was asked in a silly manner, but I am curious to know.
Sir Rhosis
But doesn’t it seem that this is rather arbitrary? I mean I know that I once planted a single strawberry plant in my garden and the thing sent off runners like mad and took the whole plot over.
My guess as far as the fresh fruit goes is that it has to do with transportability and how perishable the respective fruits are, but that wouldn’t really apply with preserves.
Please point me to a big ass jar of apple jelly. In stores around here all they sell is 12 oz. of apple, but you can get 2 pound jars of grape.
In NY State even. We grow both apples and grapes.
Strawberries are fairly dry fruits, compared to apples and grapes. It takes between seven and eleven pounds of apples to make a gallon of cider, can’t imagine how many pounds of strawberries it’d take to make a gallon of juice. If you are actually talking about jelly, only the juice is collected. If it’s preserves or jam, the entire fruit goes into the kettle. Also, manufacturers know people are willing to pay a premium price for it, so they charge accordingly.
Apples are cheap–look at a jar of baby food or bottle of fruit juice sometime, and you’ll find that apples are a major ingredient, because they stretch out the other fruit and don’t taste very strong. Apples are much easier to harvest than strawberries (I know, I worked a strawberry field once), and you get a lot more volume per acre. They travel better, too.
Grapes are also pretty cheap. The ones that become jelly don’t have to be pretty, like the fruit in the store, and they’re very juicy.
Like strawberries, other berries are harder to harvest, yield less per acre, and don’t travel well. They spoil faster, too.
Plus, there’s the whole supply and demand thing - the price reflects what people are prepared to pay.
<Homer Simpson> mmmmmm…strawberries… <Homer S.>
Where I shop the prices are the same for all flavors, both for the expensive little jars and the big store brand jars.