Skip to main content
Dessert

Cranberry Sauce

A sauce made from cranberries, water, and sugar, cooked until the berries burst and the mixture thickens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Cranberry Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Pick over and wash the cranberries.

  2. Combine cranberries and water in a pot.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes until the berries crack open.

  4. Add sugar and let steep without boiling until done.

Cool

  1. Cool in a porcelain 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 pectin that helps the sauce thicken as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart berries and helps the sauce set to a smooth, spoonable texture.

The step that matters

Add sugar and let steep without boiling. Holding the sauce just below a boil lets the sugar dissolve and the berries soften gently. A hard boil can break down pectin, leaving the sauce thin and slower to set.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes