Spoonfuls of golden lemon saffron marmalade and deep red strawberry jam on a white plate beside a wedge of aged cheese, a split lemon and a few saffron threads

BRINS Jam and Marmalade, from Brooklyn by Way of Louisiana

September 28, 2026

BRINS is a jam and marmalade maker that began in a Brooklyn kitchen, and its origin is unusually specific. According to the company, it started by "making preserves out of the abundant care packages of backyard citrus and herbs sent from back home in Louisiana." The name is a Cajun French word meaning "little bit," which the maker describes as a nod to its founder's Louisiana home and heritage. Each of the six stocked jars pairs its fruit with one aromatic: a spice, an herb, a flower or a salt. This guide covers the maker, the recipes and those six jars. For the definitions behind the words on the label, start with Jam, Preserves, Marmalade and Fruit Butter.

An architect in the kitchen

The founder is Candice Ross, whom the company describes as "Part Architect. Whole Jammer." Before jam, she worked in corporate design. A 2019 profile in Garçon's World describes her as having been the principal architect at Ralph Lauren and credits her with the brand's Fifth Avenue flagship and Polo Lounge. The BRINS about page says she traveled extensively in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, "wandering the spice markets & souks" to understand each culture through its traditional flavors.

That background shows in the range. The company says her aim was to "marry the highest quality spices & favorite fruits to build the perfect 'space'," and the flavors read like a floor plan: a familiar fruit as the structure, one aromatic as the detail. Strawberry gets lemongrass. Lemon gets saffron. Sour cherries get the spices of masala chai, in a jar the maker calls Cherry Chai. Grapefruit gets rosemary. Nothing is layered five deep.

Who makes it now

In 2021, Ross passed the company to the Zukovich family, described on the BRINS site as "friends & a fellow small company, farmers & decades old family business." The same page says the production site is a small-town farm operating since the 1950s, and that the family keeps her recipes unchanged, with a focus on "quality, fresh ingredients and small scale." The name on the jar stayed the same, the recipes did too, and the company went to friends of the founder, another small family business.

What is in a BRINS jar

The ingredient lists are short. The Lemon Saffron marmalade, per the maker, is lemons (juice and peel), cane sugar, pectin, sea salt and saffron. The Strawberry Lemongrass is strawberries, cane sugar, lemongrass, lemon juice, pectin and sea salt. The Garçon's World profile notes that the sugar is cane sugar and that the jams are made from fresh, whole fruit and herbs, and the product pages say the jars contain no artificial preservatives and no high-fructose corn syrup and are vegan and gluten-free. The Strawberry Lemongrass page also claims 25 percent less added sugar than typical preserves. The maker does not publish the sugar-to-fruit ratio behind that number.

Two ingredients on those lists stand out. The first is sea salt, an ingredient more familiar in savory cooking than on a jam label. The second is pectin, which appears in both lists, and the reason for it comes down to the fruit.

Why the pectin is there

The National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia puts the rule plainly: a jellied fruit product needs the right combination of fruit, pectin, acid and sugar to set. Pectin is the fruit's own gelling substance, and fruits carry very different amounts. The NCHFP groups fruits by how readily they gel. Sour apples, crabapples, gooseberries, Concord grapes and non-Italian plums have enough natural pectin and acid when not overripe. Strawberries and blueberries fall in the group that always needs added acid, pectin or both.

Set the stocked BRINS jars against those groups and the pectin on the label makes sense. Strawberry, in two of the six stocked jars, and wild blueberry both sit in the group that always needs help, and sour cherry, in the maker's Cherry Chai, sits in the group low in acid or pectin. Concord grape, the fruit in Salted Concord, is the exception, since it belongs to the group that gels on its own. The NCHFP notes that sugar is the product's preservative and must be in proper proportion with pectin and acid for a good gel, and that acid is needed both for gel formation and for flavor. The lemon juice in the Strawberry Lemongrass likely supplies that acid. For a line-by-line reading of any jam label, see How to Buy Jam.

The six jars

Jar	Fruit	Aromatic	From the maker	Use
Lemon Saffron Marmalade (shop Lemon Saffron Marmalade)	Whole lemon, thin sliced	Herati saffron	"Tart & sharp with undertones of aromatic honey"; pairs with Pleasant Ridge Reserve and Idyll Goat	A washed-rind or aged Alpine cheese; glazed on roast chicken in the last ten minutes
Strawberry Lemongrass (shop Strawberry Lemongrass)	Strawberry	Lemongrass	"Classic, juicy sweet with light floral tones of lemongrass"; pairs with Tome Adrienne and Bonne Bouche aged goat	Toast, yogurt, a fresh goat cheese
Wild Blueberry Sumac (shop Wild Blueberry Sumac)	Wild blueberry	Sumac	Listed by fruit and aromatic	Beside lamb or duck; stirred into a pan sauce
Forbidden Fruit (shop Forbidden Fruit)	Peach and fig	Laurel (bay) leaf	7.5 oz; listed by fruit and aromatic	Blue cheese, prosciutto, a pork chop
Salted Concord (shop Salted Concord)	Concord grape	Mishio Japanese sea salt	7.5 oz; listed by fruit and salt	The grown-up version of the peanut butter and jelly (peanut butter and jelly guide)
Unicorn Garden (shop Unicorn Garden)	Pomegranate and strawberry	Rose	7.5 oz; listed by fruit and aromatic	Shortbread, a cream scone, a plain ricotta

Where the maker publishes a tasting note or a cheese pairing, the table quotes it. For the other four jars, the table lists only the ingredients in each jar's name, and the "Use" column is a kitchen suggestion.

The Lemon Saffron, up close

The Lemon Saffron won a Gold sofi Award for Best Jam, according to Garçon's World, and it is the clearest example of the BRINS method. The maker describes "thin sliced whole lemons" that are "slow simmered with sustainably sourced Herati saffron threads." Because the whole lemon goes into the pot, peel included, the result is a marmalade rather than a lemon curd or a sweet lemon jelly. Herati saffron is also sold on its own, as the Herati saffron from Burlap & Barrel (shop Herati saffron from Burlap & Barrel), whose sourcing is covered in the Burlap & Barrel guide.

Storing an open jar

On the Lemon Saffron page, the maker's instruction is specific: keep the jar refrigerated after opening and finish it within eight weeks. The NCHFP notes that sugar is what preserves a jellied product, so an open jar of a less-sweet preserve is worth keeping cold and finishing promptly. The broader rules on mold, refrigeration and how long jam keeps are in Does Jam Go Bad?.

Short answers

Is BRINS still made in Brooklyn? The company lists a Brooklyn address. Since 2021, the Zukovich family has made the jam on their farm. Did the recipes change with the new owners? The maker says no. Is it jam or marmalade? Both. The citrus jars, such as Lemon Saffron and the Rosemary Grapefruit on the maker's list, are marmalades, and the rest are jams and spreads. Is it vegan? The product pages say yes, and the Lemon Saffron page says its pectin is extracted from citrus peel.

The Ambrosian Pantry is at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, where staff can help in person, and products ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com.