Fruit jelly was a jelly dish that could be made with a variety of different fruits. The Artiodac chef Strono Tuggs served them without charge as a signature dish while he worked at Takodana Castle, using the popular jellies to prepare customers' palates for later courses.
In 34 ABY, a platter of the jellies sat on a table at the castle where the castle's owner, Maz Kanata, sat with the guests Han Solo, Finn, Rey, and BB-8 shortly before the First Order destroyed the establishment. Tuggs moved on to work out of a food freighter in Black Spire Outpost on the planet Batuu, but never served the jellies there, although he did include an updated recipe for the dish in his third cookbook, The Ultimate Cookbook, in 35 ABY.
Fruit jellies were a dish consisting of pieces of fruit suspended in or mixed with wobbly jelly. A variety of fruits could be used, including chando peppers, durang fruit, heartweed, honey melon, muja fruit, oi-ois, shi-shok, or brub berries. The dish could be served in a glass with the jelly broken up and mixed with the fruit or on a platter with the jelly in a domed shape with the fruit suspended inside.
Fruit jellies were served on platters at Takodana Castle.
While working as a chef in the kitchens of Takodana Castle on the Mid Rim planet Takodana, the Artiodac Strono Tuggs made fruit jellies as a signature dish. Using whatever produce from the castle's gardens was fresh as ingredients, Tuggs prefered serving the dishes family style so that everyone could help themselves to as much as they wanted. He laid out platters of the jellies on the various dining tables in the castle and did not charge for the food, using it to prepare the customers palates for what was to come in later courses. The jellies were always popular and had the Artiodac charged for them they would have been his best seller by some margin.
In 34 ABY, a platter that included fresh dome-shaped fruit jellies that included different ingredients such as chando peppers, durang fruit, heartweed, honey melon, muja fruit, and oi-oi was sat with other plates of food on a Takodana Castle table that Maz Kanata, the alien owner of the castle, used while sitting to talk with the droid BB-8 and the human guests Han Solo, Rey, and Finn. Shortly after the group left the table, Takodana Castle was destroyed by the First Order.
Tuggs survived the castle's destruction and soon began serving food out of a food freighter called Tuggs' Grub in Black Spire Outpost on the planet Batuu. Although he claimed that he served a "taste of Takodana" at the freighter, Tuggs never included the fruit jellies on the menu. However, after taking a culinary tour of the galaxy between 34 ABY and 35 ABY, he created an updated fruit jelly recipe using shi-shok he had picked up on the planet Kashyyyk and brub berries from the moon Endor. The new version of the dish still used his classic Takodanan technique, but was served with the jelly mixed with the fruit in a glass rather then in a domed form. He included the recipe in his third cookbook, The Ultimate Cookbook, which was published in 35 ABY.
Fruit jelly first appeared in the 2015 sequel trilogy film, Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens. The dish was first identified in the 2017 reference book Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia. The 2023 recipe book Star Wars: The Ultimate Cookbook, written by Jenn Fujikawa and Marc Sumerak, includes an out-of-universe recipe for fruit jellies which makes use of strawberry gelatin, boiling water, cold lemon lime soda, lime juice, balled dragonfruit, halved grapes, and blueberries.
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary
- Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia
- Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary, New Edition
- Star Wars: The Ultimate Cookbook