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Stewed Cranberries (Cups cranberries cups sugar)
3 cups cranberries 1½ cups sugar 1 cup water Boil together the sugar and water for seven minutes; then add the cranberries, well washed and picked, and cook until the berries burst. Serve the same as cranberry sauce.
A whole-berry cranberry sauce built on a boiled syrup rather than dumping everything in the pot at once. Almost nothing needs converting; the only real decisions are timing and how you want the finished texture.
- Quantities in modern termsThree cups of whole cranberries is a standard 12 oz bag, near enough. The recipe yields roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups of sauce, enough for six to eight at a holiday table.
- The seven-minute syrupBoiling the sugar and water first is the distinctive part of the method. Berries dropped into a hot syrup tend to hold their shape and skins better than berries stewed in plain water with sugar added later, which suits a whole-berry result.
- Cook only until they burstThe instruction is literal. Most of the berries will pop within five to eight minutes of hitting the syrup; keep going and you have jelly with the skins broken down. Pull the pan when the popping slows.
- It sets as it coolsCranberries are high in natural pectin, so the sauce will look alarmingly thin in the pan and firm up considerably at room temperature. Do not boil it down to the thickness you want to serve.
- "Well washed and picked"Picked over, not picked from the bush: discard soft, shrivelled or pale berries and any stems. Frozen cranberries work without thawing, though they may need an extra minute.
- Sugar levelOne and a half cups to a bag of berries is on the sweet side by modern habit, though not unusual for the period. Dropping to a cup gives a sharper sauce that will still thicken, since cranberries carry plenty of pectin of their own.
- ServingServe cold or barely warm with roast turkey, goose or pork. It keeps a week or more covered in the refrigerator.
Cranberries were one of the few native North American fruits to hold a permanent place on the nineteenth-century table, largely because they keep for months in a cold cellar and need no preserving beyond sugar and heat. Commercial cultivation on the Cape Cod and New Jersey bogs expanded through the 1800s, and by the later part of the century a boxed or barrelled supply of berries was an ordinary autumn purchase for American households rather than a foraged luxury. The recipe's own closing line -- 'serve the same as cranberry sauce' -- suggests the two were understood as close relatives, the difference being that the stewed version leaves the berries whole.