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Cranberry Sauce
1 quart cranberries 2 cups sugar 1 cup water Put all together into saucepan. Cover until it boils. Remove cover and cook about 10 minutes or until berries have all burst. Pour into mold, chill and serve.
For "Cranberry Jelly" strain and put into mold and chill.
A whole-berry sauce with the option of straining it into a clear jelly. It is essentially the standard formula still used today, and it needs very little translation.
- QuantitiesA quart of cranberries is roughly 4 cups, near a pound by weight, so a little more than the standard 12-oz supermarket bag. Two cups of sugar to that quantity is on the sweet side but typical of the period; a cup and a half still sets well.
- The hinge: don't overcookTen minutes past the boil is the outside limit. Cranberries are high in pectin and set as they cool, so a sauce that looks loose in the pan is right; one that looks thick in the pan will be stiff and slightly bitter once chilled.
- Covering the panThe lid is there to bring the mixture to a boil quickly and to keep the berries from popping out. The recipe has it come off as soon as the boil is reached, so the liquid can reduce while the berries burst.
- Straining for jellyStrain while hot through a sieve, pressing the pulp through with a wooden spoon for a soft jelly, or letting it drip undisturbed through cheesecloth for a clear one. Skim the foam off the top before it sets or the surface will be cloudy.
- MouldingRinse the mould with cold water and do not oil it. Chill at least four hours; overnight is better. To turn it out, dip the mould briefly in warm water.
- Yield and keepingRoughly 3 1/2 to 4 cups, enough for eight or more servings alongside a roast. It keeps a week or more covered in the refrigerator and freezes well.
Cranberries are native to North America and were among the few fruits that could be had fresh well into winter, since the berries keep for weeks in a cold cellar without processing. That durability is often said to be why the sauce became fixed to the late-autumn roast, though the connection is hard to establish. In an early twentieth-century American cookbook cranberry sauce was not a jam but an accompaniment, meant to be eaten with the turkey and the gravy. The two-cup-to-a-quart sugar ratio and the whole-berry-or-strained choice suggest the method was already settled well before this one printed it.