My jelly hell: ‘Slowly, the whole thing collapsed before me’

Jelly is back in all its wobbly, Instagram-friendly glory. But does it always taste as impressive as it looks? And why is it so hard to get it to set rather than slump? This could get messy …

Jelly has a dowdy reputation, but it may well be the perfect food for the Instagram age: when it works, it’s incredibly photogenic, so who cares what it tastes like?

There can be no other explanation for recent claims that savoury jellies – the most lurid and off-putting of dishes, reminiscent of the worst culinary efforts of the 1950s – are suddenly fashionable. This resurgence comes, according to the New York Times, “at a time when chefs are feeling pressure to produce viral visuals and molecular gastronomy is old hat”.