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Cranberry Sauce
1 quart cranberries 1 cup sugar 1 1/2 to 2 cups water Pick over the cranberries very carefully, wash, and cook in boiling water. Add the sugar, and cook slowly until the berries are soft and tender. The intense acidity of the berries may be partly obviated by first parboiling them just for five minutes. Then remove from fire, force through a strainer, and cool.
A strained cranberry sauce rather than the whole-berry kind, and the water quantity is generous by modern habit. A few adjustments bring it in line.
- What a quart of cranberries isA quart measured dry is roughly 1 lb of berries, which is the 12 oz bag plus a handful, or about 4 cups loose. One standard bag is close enough.
- Cut the waterA cup and a half to two cups is a great deal of liquid for a pound of fruit; it suits this recipe only because the pulp is later forced through a strainer. For a spoonable sauce, 3/4 to 1 cup of water is plenty.
- Cook timeCranberries pop and collapse in 8 to 12 minutes of gentle simmering. "Slowly until soft and tender" does not mean half an hour; long boiling drives off the fresh flavour and dulls the colour.
- The parboil is optional and costs you somethingThe parboil is optional and may cost you something -- blanching five minutes and discarding the water does soften the acidity, but some pectin and aroma go with it. Many modern recipes omit the step and rely on sugar instead. The recipe as written does not actually say to throw the parboiling water away.
- SugarOne cup to a pound of berries is on the tart side of modern taste. Add half the sugar, taste once the fruit has broken down, then add the rest as needed. Sugar added early can firm the skins slightly; note that the recipe here adds it before the berries have softened.
- StrainingPush the hot pulp through a fine sieve or food mill, not a blender, to leave the skins and seeds behind. Working it hot is far easier than working it cool.
- It sets as it coolsCranberry pectin gels on cooling, so a sauce that looks thin in the pan will be noticeably thicker at room temperature. Judge consistency after chilling, not before.
- YieldAbout 2 to 2 1/2 cups strained if the water is cut as suggested above; more if the full 1 1/2 to 2 cups is used. Enough for eight to ten servings as an accompaniment, or four small dessert dishes.
Cranberries are one of the few fruits cultivated commercially from a native North American wild plant, Vaccinium macrocarpon, and the bog culture that made them cheap enough for everyday cooking is generally traced to Cape Cod in the early nineteenth century. The name is usually explained as a shortening of "craneberry," after the shape of the flower, though that derivation is traditional rather than settled. Straining the sauce smooth and serving it cold, as here, suits a fruit purée more than the whole-berry sauce most kitchens make now.