Cranberry Sauce

The first known recipe for cranberry sauce appears in the 1796 edition of The Art of Cookery by Amelia Simmons. This was the first known cookbook authored by an American.

Pilgrims and Cranberries

Fresh cranberries are extremely tart. Though wild cranberries grew in the Massachusetts Bay area, Pilgrims most likely didn’t enjoy the sauce at the First Thanksgiving because sugar was a scarcity.

Cranberry sauce was first offered to consumers in North America in 1912 in Hanson, Massachusetts. Canned sauce appeared on the market in 1941, allowing the product to be sold year-round.¹ Most grocery stores today carry it year round.

The most basic recipe consists of cranberries boiled in sugar water until the berries pop and the mixture thickens. Some recipes include other ingredients such as slivered almonds, orange juice, zest, ginger, maple syrup, port, or cinnamon.

Commercial cranberry sauce may be loose and uncondensed, condensed or jellied and sweetened with various ingredients. The jellied form may be slipped out of a can onto a dish, and served sliced or intact for slicing at the table.

Making Cranberry Sauce

My cranberry sauce version is a simple 3-ingredient recipe, that includes cranberries, sugar and orange juice. I find that the sweetness and touch of tartness counterbalance the savory turkey and fatty gravy.

It only takes 15 minutes to make this recipe. You can use frozen or fresh cranberries. Dissolve the sugar in the orange juice. Then stir in the cranberries and heat them until they “pop” open. It should take 10-15 minutes.

I prepare it in advance and then chill it in the refrigerator to thicken it. If you feel fancy, grate a little orange peel into it before serving. Serve it as a side to your Thanksgiving turkey.

Let me know how you like the orange twist.

Try my other Thanksgiving recipes here.