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CHAPTER XIII: Cranberry
CRANBERRY JELLY Cook one quart of cranberries and one cup of water in a covered dish five or six minutes. Then with a pestle press them through a fine sieve. Stir in two cups of sugar; and, without reheating, turn the mixture into a mould. Do not return to the fire after the sugar is added or the mixture will not jelly. The strong acid of the cranberry in connection with high heat "splits" the sugar and interferes with the jellying process.
STRAINED CRANBERRY SAUCE Prepare as jelly in the recipe given above, except cook the cranberries in two cups of water.
CRANBERRY SAUCE, UNSTRAINED Heat two cups, each, of sugar and water to the boiling-point. Add one quart of cranberries. Cover the saucepan, and let stand on the back of the range five minutes. Then move to the front of the range, and let cook five minutes after boiling begins. Set the sauce aside, covered, in the saucepan, until cold. The shape of the cranberries is well preserved in this sauce. APPLES STUFFED WITH DATES AND BAKED Select tart apples, core neatly, pare, and fill the cavities with stoned dates (prepared as above). Bake until tender throughout in a hot oven, basting once or twice with a little hot, sugar-and-water syrup. Serve with the morning cereal, or as a dessert dish at luncheon or dinner, with cream or milk. APPLES, PRALINEE 4 apples 1/3 cup of blanched almonds, 3/4 cup of sugar chopped fine 1 cup of water 8 level tablespoonfuls of sugar Core and pare the apples; dissolve the sugar in the water, then let cook about five minutes; in this syrup cook the apples until tender, turning them often to keep them in shape and to cook throughout the apple. Remove to a serving dish. Stir constantly while cooking the eight spoonfuls of sugar and the almonds over a hot fire until the sugar becomes caramelized. Turn the nuts and caramel upon the apples, taking care that none falls on the dish. Have the syrup in which the apples were cooked boiled till quite thick, pour this around the apples. Serve at once or when cold with or without cream. LEMON JELLY 1 tablespoonful of granulated 1 cup of boiling water gelatine 1/2 cup of sugar 1/4 cup of cold water 1/2 cup of lemon juice Let the gelatine stand in the cold water fifteen minutes or longer (until all the water is absorbed); add the boiling water and sugar and stir until the gelatine and sugar are dissolved; let cool a little, add the lemon juice and turn into cups. Set aside to become cold and firm. Serve with cream or boiled custard. Preserved peaches or pears, cooked prunes or figs, or nut meats, also sections of orange, from which the membrane has been removed, or slices of banana, may be moulded in the jelly. A tablespoonful of gelatine is needed to each scant pint of liquid.
A cluster of fruit desserts from a two-person household book: three cranberry preparations, two baked-apple dishes and a moulded gelatine. Quantities are small by period standards but still generous for two, and several of the instructions assume a coal range with hot and cool zones.
- The hinge: no heat after the sugarFor the jelly, the sugar goes into the hot strained pulp off the fire and the mixture is moulded immediately. The book's explanation is half right — acid does invert sucrose — but the practical reason is that cranberries are exceptionally high in pectin, and prolonged boiling with sugar breaks that pectin down. Stir only until the sugar dissolves in the residual heat.
- Quantities in modern termsOne quart of cranberries is about 1 lb, or 4 cups whole berries, a little more than a standard 12-oz supermarket bag. Yields differ between the three: the jelly, made with only one cup of water, gives the least; the unstrained sauce, with two cups each of sugar and water, gives considerably more.
- Oven temperatureA "hot oven" for the stuffed apples means 400-425F. Reckon 35-50 minutes depending on the variety and size; the apples are done when a skewer meets no resistance at the centre.
- "The back of the range"On a wood or coal range the back was the cool zone. For the unstrained sauce, that means covering the pan off the heat or over the lowest possible flame for five minutes so the berries soften without bursting, then bringing it to a boil for five minutes over direct heat.
- Pressing through a sieveA pestle and fine sieve gives a smooth, seed-free pulp; a food mill or a wooden spoon against a mesh strainer does the same work. Avoid a blender, which pulverises the skins so that they pass the sieve and cloud the jelly.
- Dates "prepared as above"Dates 'prepared as above' -- The cross-reference is to an earlier page not reproduced here, evidently covering the stoning of the dates. Modern pitted dates need only a rinse, and if they are dry a ten-minute soak in warm water makes them plump enough to fill the cavities.
- Apples pralinée: two sugars, two jobsThe 3/4 cup of sugar makes the poaching syrup; the 8 tablespoons (1/2 cup) are caramelised dry with the almonds. Caramel reaches about 340F and sets in seconds — have the poached apples drained and waiting on the serving dish before you start it, and pour without hesitation.
- Gelatine measureA tablespoon of granulated gelatine is roughly one standard 1/4-oz envelope (an envelope is a scant tablespoon, about 2 1/4 teaspoons), and the book's ratio of a tablespoon to a scant pint of liquid still holds for a jelly firm enough to unmould. Bloom in cold water, then dissolve in the boiling water without boiling the gelatine itself.
- Fruit that will not setThe suggested additions (preserved peaches, prunes, figs, orange sections, banana) are all safe, being cooked or preserved. Fresh pineapple, kiwi, papaya and ginger contain proteases that digest gelatine and leave a syrup instead of a jelly; fresh figs are also best avoided. Add 1/2 cup lemon juice as written for a sharp, clean-tasting set.
Cranberry cookery is one of the few genuinely North American branches of the nineteenth-century domestic repertoire: Vaccinium macrocarpon grows in acid bogs from Massachusetts to Wisconsin, and commercial cultivation on Cape Cod dates from the first half of the nineteenth century, which put cheap barrels of berries into eastern markets each autumn. Because the fruit is both very acid and very rich in pectin, it sets into jelly with nothing but sugar — no added pectin, no long boil. The chemistry offered here, that acid and high heat "split" the sugar, reflects the era's new enthusiasm for teaching food science in the domestic-science classroom; sucrose inversion is real, though the practical damage from overcooking is to the pectin. The chapter's drift from cranberries into baked apples, caramelised almonds and a lemon gelatine follows the logic of a two-person menu book rather than of botany: these are all cold or make-ahead sweets that keep a day or two in a small household, and gelatine desserts in particular were fashionable once granulated gelatine could be bought by the envelope instead of boiled out of calves' feet at home.