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Spiced Cranberries
5 pounds cranberries 3½ pounds brown sugar 2 cups vinegar 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon and allspice 1 tablespoon cloves.
Boil all together for 2 hours. Serve with hot or cold meats.
A sweet-sour cranberry relish of the sort that stood on the sideboard beside cold roast meat. The proportions are sound; the cooking time is the part that needs rethinking.
- The two-hour boilCranberries burst and release their pectin within about ten minutes, and the mixture will set hard and darken long before two hours are up. Twenty-five to forty minutes over low heat, stirring often, gives a thick, glossy conserve; longer risks scorching once the free liquid cooks off.
- A heavy pan mattersFive pounds of fruit with 3½ pounds of sugar reduces to a dense mass that catches easily. Use a wide, heavy-bottomed preserving pan and stir down to the base, not just around the surface.
- Ambiguous spice line"2 tablespoons ground cinnamon and allspice" can be read as two tablespoons of each or two tablespoons in total. Two of each is in keeping with the robust spicing of period pickles and conserves; start with one of each if you prefer a gentler result.
- ClovesThe recipe says only "1 tablespoon cloves" and does not specify ground or whole. A full tablespoon of ground cloves is assertive and will dominate as the conserve matures; halving it gives a gentler result, and whole cloves in a muslin bag, removed at the end, give the aroma without the gritty bite.
- VinegarThe recipe does not specify a type. Cider vinegar suits the fruit and sugar well, though malt and white vinegar were also in ordinary use. Any vinegar of 5 percent acidity works; malt or distilled white will read sharper against the brown sugar.
- SugarBrown sugar of the period was generally less refined and less uniform than today's. Light or dark brown both work — dark pushes the finished relish toward a molasses depth that suits ham and game.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no yield; a batch on this scale will run to several quarts rather than a pint or two. It also gives no sealing instructions; refrigerate and use within about a month, or process in jars following a current tested water-bath procedure rather than simply pouring hot into covered pots.
- ServingBest after a few days' rest, when the spices settle. It suits cold ham, roast pork, turkey and strong cheese, and a spoonful stirred into pan juices makes a quick sauce.
Spiced cranberries belong to the family of sweet-sour fruit relishes — spiced pears, pickled peaches, damson cheese — that Victorian and Edwardian tables set out for the cold-meat course, where the vinegar-and-sugar balance cut through fat in an age of large roasts. The cranberry is North American, and commercial cultivation was long centred in the bogs of Massachusetts and New Jersey; growing in eastern Canada came later. The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote its flour, and like other branded household books of the era it gathered a broad domestic repertoire.