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Dessert

Cranberry Sauce

A thickened sauce made from cranberries, water, and sugar, cooled and set in the refrigerator.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Cranberry Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash and pick over the cranberries.

  2. Put the cranberries in a pot with ½ cup of water.

  3. Stew slowly, stirring often, until thick like marmalade, about 1 hour.

Sweeten and mold

  1. Sweeten generously with white sugar.

  2. Strain through a coarse cloth into a mold wet with cold water.

Chill and serve

  1. Refrigerate until set, then turn out into a glass dish.

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 thickens the sauce as it cooks.
White sugar
Sweetens the sauce, balances its tartness, and helps it thicken and set.

The step that matters

Stew slowly, stirring often, until thick like marmalade. Pectin from the cranberries only thickens fully when the sauce is cooked long enough with sugar and acid. Stirring often prevents the bottom from scorching, and stopping too early leaves a sauce that will not set when chilled.

“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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