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Cranberry Sauce De Luxe
(JELLIED CRANBERRIES) 16 lbs. Ripe Cranberries 2 cups Water 6 level cups (21½ lbs.) Sugar 1 bottle (scant cup) CERTO Pinch or crush berries with the fingers so that they "pop" or open up. If too hard or green to open in this manner slit part way with knife. Use ripest berries for finest flavor. Dissolve sugar in water, then add broken berries. Bring slowly to a boil and boil hard 1 minute. Remove from fireandstir in CERTO. Skim and pour quickly.
A whole-berry cranberry jelly built on liquid pectin rather than long boiling, which is why the cooking time is a single minute. The printed quantities have suffered in transcription and need reading with care.
- The garbled amounts"16 lbs." of cranberries against six cups of sugar is not a workable ratio; the sugar line "21½ lbs." is plainly 2½ lbs, which matches six level cups. The fruit weight is anyone's guess -- a pound or a pound and a half would both fit the rest of the method. Treat it as ambiguous and follow the ratio on your pectin package instead of the numbers as printed.
- Certo then and nowThe bottle called for here held about 8 fl oz, a "scant cup." Current liquid pectin comes in 3 fl oz pouches, two to a box, so one old bottle is not one modern pouch. Use the fruit-to-sugar-to-pectin proportions given in the insert that comes with the packet.
- Popping the berriesThe recipe insists on crushing each berry so the skin opens, and slitting the hard ones with a knife if they will not. The point is to let the juice out into the syrup rather than leaving sealed berries floating in it.
- Boil hard, one minuteA hard boil means a rolling boil that cannot be stirred down, timed from that moment. Longer boiling with added pectin breaks the set rather than improving it.
- Skim and pour quicklyLiquid pectin added off the heat begins gelling within a few minutes. Have jars or a mould warmed and ready before the pot comes off the fire, or the surface will skin over mid-pour.
- SealingPreserves of this vintage were poured into glasses and capped with melted paraffin, a method no longer recommended. Refrigerate the finished sauce and use within a few weeks, or process filled jars by a current water-bath schedule.
Certo was among the first commercial liquid pectins sold to home cooks, and the little booklets that carried recipes like this one existed to demonstrate what it did: cut boiling times dramatically, so that jellies kept the fresh colour and flavour of the fruit rather than the caramelised taste of a long reduction. Cranberries were an obvious showcase. They are naturally high in acid and pectin, which is why cooks had long been able to jelly them without help, but the added pectin let the sugar-to-fruit ratio be fixed and the result be reliable rather than a matter of judgment at the stove. The "de luxe" in the title may point to the whole berries suspended in clear jelly, though that reading is a matter of interpretation rather than record.