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Dessert

Cranberry Sauce

A sauce made from cranberries, boiled water, and sugar, cooked until soft and sweetened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Cranberry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pick over and wash the cranberries.

  2. Add the boiling water, cover, and cook slowly until very soft; then remove from heat.

  3. Add the sugar and stir until thoroughly dissolved.

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 fruit base and pectin that thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the cranberries' sharp acidity.

The step that matters

Cook the cranberries slowly until very soft. Slow cooking in a covered pan softens the skins and releases pectin evenly, so the sauce thickens as it cools rather than staying watery or scorching on the bottom.

“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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