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Alternative names | Cranberry jam |
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Type | Sauce or jam |
Place of origin | New England |
Main ingredients | Cranberries, sugar, water |
Cranberry sauce or cranberry jam [1] is a sauce or relish made out of cranberries, commonly served as a condiment or a side dish with Thanksgiving dinner in North America and Christmas dinner in the United Kingdom and Canada. There are differences in flavor depending on the geography of where the sauce is made: in Europe it is generally slightly sour-tasting, while in North America it is typically more heavily sweetened.
The recipe for cranberry sauce appears in the 1796 edition of American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, the first known cookbook authored by an American.
In 1606, the Mi'kmaq people introduced the French settlers in Port-Royal, Nova Scotia, to cranberries. They would have been sweetened with maple sugar and served at the settlers first Thanksgiving in North America that year. The settlers described eating what they called "small red apples" in letters sent back to France. Port-Royal reports contained menus describing cranberries. They are still called pommes de prés, or 'meadow apples', today in Acadia.
Although the Pilgrims may have been aware of the wild cranberries growing in the Massachusetts Bay area, it is unlikely that cranberry sauce would have been among the dishes served at the First Thanksgiving meal. Cranberries are not mentioned by any primary sources for the First Thanksgiving meal. The only foods mentioned are "Indian corn", wild turkey and waterfowl, and venison. The rest remains a matter of speculation among food historians. Although stuffings are not mentioned in primary sources, it was a common way to prepare birds for the table in the 17th century. [2] According to a "Thanksgiving Primer" published by the Plimoth Plantation, cranberries may have been used in the stuffing recipes, but it is unlikely they would have been made into a sauce because sugar was very scarce. [3]
Cranberry sauce was invented by Marcus Urann – founder of the Ocean Spray cooperative – and first offered to consumers in North America in 1912 in Hanson, Massachusetts. [4] [5] Canned cranberry sauce appeared on the market in 1941, allowing the product to be sold year-round. [6] Cranberry sauce can be used with a variety of meats, including turkey, pork, chicken, and ham.
Cranberry sauce is often eaten in conjunction with turkey for Christmas in the United Kingdom and Canada or Thanksgiving in the United States and Canada, and it is only rarely eaten or served in other contexts there. [7]
The most basic cranberry sauce 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, orange zest, ginger, maple syrup, port, or cinnamon.
Commercial cranberry sauce may be loose and uncondensed, or 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. Marcus Urann first commercially produced cranberry sauce in 1912, selling it locally in the Massachusetts market. In 1941, it was first marketed nationally in the USA by the agricultural cooperative that later became known as Ocean Spray, where Urann was president. [8]
Cranberries are a group of evergreen dwarf shrubs or trailing vines in the subgenus Oxycoccus of the genus Vaccinium. Cranberries are low, creeping shrubs or vines up to 2 meters (7 ft) long and 5 to 20 centimeters in height; they have slender stems that are not thickly woody and have small evergreen leaves. The flowers are dark pink. The fruit is a berry that is larger than the leaves of the plant; it is initially light green, turning red when ripe. It is edible, but has an acidic taste.
Gelatin desserts are desserts made with a sweetened and flavoured processed collagen product (gelatin), which makes the dessert "set" from a liquid to a soft elastic solid gel. This kind of dessert was first recorded as "jelly" by Hannah Glasse in her 18th-century book The Art of Cookery, appearing in a layer of trifle. Jelly recipes are included in the 19th-century cookbooks of English food writers Eliza Acton and Mrs Beeton.
New England cuisine is an American cuisine which originated in the New England region of the United States, and traces its roots to traditional English cuisine and Native American cuisine of the Abenaki, Narragansett, Niantic, Wabanaki, Wampanoag, and other native peoples. It also includes influences from Irish, French-Canadian, Italian, and Portuguese cuisine, among others. It is characterized by extensive use of potatoes, beans, dairy products and seafood, resulting from its historical reliance on its seaports and fishing industry. Corn, the major crop historically grown by Native American tribes in New England, continues to be grown in all New England states, primarily as sweet corn although flint corn is grown as well. It is traditionally used in hasty puddings, cornbreads and corn chowders.
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Stuffing, filling, or dressing is an edible mixture, often composed of herbs and a starch such as bread, used to fill a cavity in the preparation of another food item. Many foods may be stuffed, including poultry, seafood, and vegetables. As a cooking technique stuffing helps retain moisture, while the mixture itself serves to augment and absorb flavors during its preparation.
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Turkey meat, commonly referred to as just turkey, is the meat from turkeys, typically domesticated turkeys, but also wild turkeys. It is a popular poultry dish, especially in North America and the United Kingdom, where it is traditionally consumed as part of culturally significant events such as Thanksgiving and Christmas respectively, as well as in standard cuisine.
A Pilgrim or Puritan is a sandwich which has connotations with the American Pilgrim Fathers and Thanksgiving Day. It was a traditional way of using up leftover food from Thanksgiving Day and thus is composed essentially of bread slices or a roll, into which are placed sliced roast turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberries or cranberry sauce, gravy, and/or other toppings such as cheese, lettuce or mayonnaise. There is an enormous variation in its composition with a huge range of ingredients being employed in some sandwiches and a great variation of ingredients between recipes. A basic combination might include slices of turkey, herb stuffing, cranberry sauce and some gravy between two slices of bread.
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Marcus Libby Urann, known as "Mr. Cranberry", was the captain of the 1893 University of Maine football team, one of the founders of Phi Kappa Phi honorary fraternity, a lawyer, a cranberry farmer, one of the founders of Ocean Spray cooperative, a cranberry entrepreneur and executive, and the first commercial producer or inventor of canned cranberry sauce.