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Dessert

Cranberry Sauce

A sauce made from cranberries, apples, sugar, and water, cooked and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cranberry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sauce

  1. Cut the apples into pieces with the peelings on.

  2. Add the cranberries, sugar, and water.

  3. Cook for about 1 hour.

Strain and chill

  1. Pass the mixture through a colander.

  2. Set the sauce on ice.

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cranberries
Provide the main tart flavor and body, and their skins release pectin that thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the sharp acidity of the cranberries.
Apples
Add natural pectin, helping the sauce thicken and set.

The step that matters

Cook for about 1 hour. Cooking long enough lets the cranberries burst and the pectin from fruit and skins thicken the sauce. Too little cooking leaves it thin, and too much can make it dull or overly stiff.

“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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