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Dessert

Cranberry Sauce

A simple cranberry sauce made by boiling cranberries with water, simmering, sweetening with sugar, and cooling before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Cranberry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the berries

  1. Wash the cranberries.

  2. Boil them in a clean pot with 1 inch of water.

  3. Cover tightly and boil until the berries break apart and release their juice.

  4. Remove the lid and let simmer to evaporate excess water.

Sweeten and finish

  1. Sweeten with sugar, then boil for about 5 minutes.

  2. Pour into an earthen or wooden vessel and cool.

  3. Serve with chicken, turkey, or any kind of meat or cake.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Cranberries
Provide the tart flavor and natural pectin that lets the sauce thicken as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the berries' tartness.

The step that matters

Remove the lid and let simmer. Simmering uncovered lets excess water evaporate. Without this, the sauce stays thin, and the pectin released from the berries has less concentrated liquid to set in as it cools.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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