FROM WHENCE DID THE CRANBERRY COME & “RECIPE”

By Mary Davis

 

Cranberry sauce from a can or made fresh? Which do you serve? I always served from a can, until my daughter started taking culinary classes in high school and asked if she could make fresh cranberry sauce. It was delicious. So when she’s around, we have fresh cranberry sauce goodness. When it’s just me cooking, I wield the can opener. It wasn’t until 1912 that we could have this commercially processed goodness, but cranberries were popular long before they were canned.

Cranberries are one of the few fruits native to North American and were a staple for the Native Americans. The Lenni-lenape called them Pakim meaning bitter berry. They were a symbol of peace and friendship. The Chippewas word for them is a’ni-bimin, the Narragansetts’ is sasemineash, and the Algonquin referred to them as atoqua. The fruit was used for a variety of things, like remedies, foods, drinks, and fabric dyes. They used them in an energy-bar type of food called pemmican.

Early American settlers called them “craneberries” because the flower resembled the head of a sand crane. It is said that the Pilgrims were given them at the first Thanksgiving. Each year, one-fifth of all harvested cranberries are eaten on Thanksgiving.

Back in the day, barrels of cranberries were kept aboard clipper ships to help prevent scurvy.

There are many references and mentions of cranberries from 1550 through the present, with cranberry dishes showing up in cookbook after cookbook. Barrels of berries and plants were shipped back to England, and cranberry dishes became as delicacy in some parts of Europe. The Harvard University commencement dinner in 1703 served cranberries.

Revolutionary War veteran Captain Henry Hall came across wild cranberries on Cape Cod and became the first person to successfully cultivate them. The commercial cultivation of these tart berries started in 1816 in the U. S.

Attorney Marcus L. Urann revolutionized the cranberry industry when he bought a cranberry bog and canned the fruit in 1912. In time, he established a cranberry cooperative that went on to be renamed Ocean Spray. By 1940, he had canned the gelatinous log of cranberry sauce we know and love today.

What is your favorite cranberry dish?

Mine is what I call Cranberry Delight. Basically, chocolate covered fresh cranberries.

They are simple to make. Wash the cranberries and allow them to dry completely. Melt any kind of candy coating chocolate. Coat a handful of cranberries at a time and put them on wax paper to cool until the chocolate hardens. My favorite is white chocolate. The tartness of the cranberry with the sweetness of the chocolate is oh so tasty. You can read my more in-depth directions and see pictures HERE. https://marydavisbooks.blogspot.com/2021/11/tuesday-tidbits-cranberry-delight.html

Happy Thanksgiving!

Do you prefer your cranberry sauce with or without chunks?

~~~~~

The QUILTING CIRCLE Series 

Historical Romance

THE WIDOW’S PLIGHT (Book1) – Will a secret clouding a single mother’s past cost Lily the man she loves?

THE DAUGHTER’S PREDICAMENT (Book2) *2020 Selah Awards Finalist & WRMA Finalist* – As Isabelle’s romance prospects are turning in her favor, a family scandal derails her dreams.

THE DAMSEL’S INTENT (Book3) *2021 Selah Awards Winner& WRMA Finalist*– Nicole heads down the mountain to fetch herself a husband. Can she learn to be enough of a lady to snag the handsome rancher?

THE DÉBUTANTE’S SECRET (Book4) –Complications arise when a fancy French lady, Geneviève, steps off the train and into Deputy Montana’s arms.

NEW RELEASE!!! THE LADY’S MISSION (Book5) – Will Cordelia abandon her calling for love?

MARY DAVIS, bestselling, award-winning novelist, has over thirty titles in both historical and contemporary themes. Her latest release is THE LADY’S MISSION. Her other novels include MRS. WITHERSPOON GOES TO WAR, THE DÉBUTANTE'S SECRET (Quilting Circle 4) THE DAMSEL’S INTENT (Quilting Circle 3) is a Selah Award Winner. Some of her other recent titles include; THE WIDOW’S PLIGHT, THE DAUGHTER'S PREDICAMENT, “Zola’s Cross-Country Adventure” in The MISSAdventure Brides Collection , Prodigal Daughters Amish series, and "Bygones" in Thimbles and Threads. She is a member of ACFW and active in critique groups.

Mary lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband of thirty-eight years and one cat. She has three adult children and three incredibly adorable grandchildren. Find her online at:

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Sources:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-cranberries-180957399/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranberry
https://www.cranberrycreations.com/history-of-cranberries
See it grow: CRANBERRY, by Jackie Lee, Bearport Publishing, 2016

Wonderful Little Red Berries

 Cranberries by Martha Rogers

When I start my Christmas baking, one of the first items on my list is Cranberry Orange Bread. It’s been a favorite in our family and one of mine since my grandmother taught me the recipe well over seventy-years ago. When I got out that recipe recently, I began to think about the cranberries and their history. How long have cranberries been around? Were they a part of that first Thanksgiving feast?

What I found out fascinated me, and I decided to share it with our readers. I knew cranberries grew in bogs as I had seen them in Massachusetts when we were there one year. This is what they look like.

Now, I’ve learned they’ve been around thousands of years of years when glaciers receded and formed cavities in the land. 

Wampanoag People of southeastern Massachusetts annually harvested the wild berries, and although they tasted sour, they ate some of them, others they used for dye or dried them to mix with dried meat and animal fat to make a mixture called pemmican that lasted for months. Medicine men even used them in traditional healing rituals.

As early as 1550, James White Norwood wrote about Native Americans using cranberries. It is said that those coming ashore from Europe and England were met by the Native Americans bearing cups full of the berry.

Europeans who settled and explored New England in the 16^th and 17^th century were already familiar with the berries as they grew in the boggy regions of England. They called them “craneberries” because of their similarity the head of a Sandhill crane. They were also called "bear berries" by the natives because bears liked to eat them.

This is how they looked when growing in those early days in the ponds and bogs when first seen by those early explorers.  

Popular legend has it that cranberries were served at that first Thanksgiving meal in Plymouth as the Wampanoag peoples met with them, and cranberries were a part of the food native to the them. Later, in 1648, one of the early preachers, John Elliot wrote about the difficulties the Pilgrims had using their Indian friends in the harvest of the berries. The natives much preferred hunting and fishing to harvesting cranberries. A recipe for cranberry sauce appeared in the Pilgrim cookbook in 1663, and in 1667, ten barrels of berries plus other foods were sent to King Charles as a means of appeasing his anger over some of their activities. An account of Captain Richard Cobb's wedding banquet describes the meal as wild turkey served with a sauce made of wild cranberries growing in the region.

Over the years cranberries became more popular with the settlers for cooking, medicinal purposes, and for red dyes for cloth. Below is a picture of a cranberry harvest in 1880's. Under it is one of cranberries being harvested today.

By 1885, Plymouth County boasted 1,347 acres under cultivation; Barnstable County had 2,408. By 1900, the number of acres tripled, making Cape Cod a household name. “Cranberry Fever” struck and the industry boomed. As late as 1927, the cranberry harvest remained so vital to local and state economies that Massachusetts children could be excused from school to work the bogs during harvest season. 

About 90% of today's cranberries are wet-picked as seen in the picture above, but 5-10% of the US crop is still dry-picked. This entails higher labor costs and lower yield, but dry-picked berries are less bruised and can be sold as fresh fruit instead of having to be immediately frozen or processed. Originally performed with two-handed comb scoops, dry picking is today accomplished by motorized, walk-behind harvesters which must be small enough to traverse beds without damaging the vines.

Because cranberries are such a big industry today, other businesses have sprung from the popularity of the berry. One of these is Cranberry Glass which is blown with dye added to make the glass the cranberry color. When we were in
Massachusetts, I purchased a few pieces of the glass and keep it on display. 

Popular recipes using fresh or dried cranberries or cranberry sauce include bread, muffins, cookies, congealed salads, pies, and cranberry relish. The next time you serve cranberries, think of the long history they've had in our country.

So tell me, what is your favorite cranberry recipe or dish.

Martha Rogers is a multi-published author with over 50 novels and novellas in print. Martha and her husband Rex live in Houston, Texas where they are active members of First Baptist Church, and Martha co-leads a First Place 4 Health group. They are the parents of three sons and grandparents to 9 grandchildren plus three spouses and great-grandparents to six. Martha is a retired teacher with twenty-eight years teaching Home Economics and English at the secondary level and eight years at the college level supervising student teachers and teaching freshman English.