Home › Catsups And Sauces › Cranberry Sauce
Cranberry Sauce
After removing all soft berries, wash thoroughly, place for about two minutes in scalding water, remove, and to every pound fruit add three-quarters of a pound granulated sugar and a half pint water; stew together over a moderate but steady fire. Be careful to cover and not to stir the fruit, but occasionally shake the vessel, or apply a gentler heat if in danger of sticking or burning. If attention to these particulars be given, the berries will retain their shape to a considerable extent, which adds greatly to their appearance on the table. Boil from five to seven minutes, remove from fire, turn into a deep dish, and set aside to cool. If to be kept, they can be put up at once in air-tight jars. Or, for strained sauce, one and a half pounds of fruit should be stewed in one pint of water for ten or twelve minutes, or until quite soft, then strained through a colander or fine wire sieve, and three-quarters of a pound of sugar thoroughly stirred into the pulp thus obtained; after cooling it is ready for use. Serve with roast turkey or game. When to be kept for a long time without sealing, more sugar may be added, but its too free use impairs the peculiar cranberry flavor. For dinner-sauce half a pound is more economical, and really preferable to three-quarters, as given above. It is better, though not necessary, to use a porcelain kettle. Some prefer not to add the sugar till the fruit is almost done, thinking this plan makes it more tender, and preserves the color better.-C. G. & E. W. Crane, Caldwell, N. J.
A clear, well-reasoned nineteenth-century formula that still beats most modern ones, provided you respect the two instructions the authors emphasise: do not stir, and do not overboil.
- The hinge: leave it aloneCranberries burst on their own within a few minutes and then collapse into jam if agitated. Cover the pan, shake it by the handle rather than stirring, and pull it off the heat as soon as most berries have popped.
- Weights in modern termsA pound of cranberries is about four cups, a third more than a standard 12-ounce bag; two bags come to a pound and a half. Three-quarters of a pound of sugar is about 1 2/3 cups.
- Half a pint of waterThat is one cup. For the strained version, a pint is two cups, though with a pound and a half of fruit you can use rather less and still get a workable pulp.
- "A moderate but steady fire"On a modern burner this is medium-low, just enough for a lazy simmer. Cranberries are high in pectin and sugar and will scorch on the bottom quickly at a hard boil.
- Porcelain kettleMeaning enamelled cast iron or enamelware. The point is a nonreactive surface; stainless steel or enamel is fine, bare cast iron or unlined copper is not, as the acid will pick up a metallic taste and dull the colour.
- Sugar timingThe closing note is sound. Adding sugar at the start firms the skins and slows the berries' collapse; adding it near the end gives a more tender fruit and a brighter red. Either works, so choose according to whether you want whole berries or a softer sauce.
- The scaldThe recipe does not say why the berries get a two-minute dip in scalding water; washing and softening the skins are the likely aims. With bagged supermarket fruit it can be skipped; a rinse and a sort for soft berries is enough.
- Keeping itSealing hot sauce straight into jars, with no processing, is open-kettle canning and is no longer considered a safe method even for an acidic fruit. Refrigerate the sauce for a week or two, freeze it, or follow a current boiling-water-bath procedure if you want shelf-stable jars.
- Yield and servingA pound of berries makes roughly three cups of sauce, enough for eight to ten at table. It thickens considerably as it cools, so judge the consistency cold, not hot.
Cranberries are one of the few commercially important fruits native to North America, and by the time this book appeared they had moved from wild bogs to cultivated ones, first in Massachusetts and then across the sandy pinelands of southern New Jersey. That the recipe comes from Caldwell, New Jersey, is fitting, though Caldwell is well north of the Pine Barrens bogs. The recipe takes care over whole berries versus strained pulp, offering the strained version simply as an alternative. The instruction to serve it with roast turkey or game was already conventional advice, cranberry's sharpness being valued as a foil to rich dark meat in the same way currant or barberry sauces were used in Britain. The authors' warning that too much sugar "impairs the peculiar cranberry flavor" is a note of restraint that most canned versions since have ignored.