Cranberry Sauce with Ginger and Orange

Cranberry Sauce

I remember the Thanksgiving when our family switched from canned jellied cranberry sauce to canned whole-berry sauce. It happened because of a mistake; my mother had bought the wrong kind and decided not to go back to the store to exchange it. My brothers and I were children then and we grimaced and complained the way kids frequently do when their mothers offer them something new and seemingly strange to eat.

To our surprise, everyone liked the new stuff and boy, did we feel sophisticated! No more quivering purple jelly for us! It was whole berry sauce every year after that.

Those were the days when cranberries were a once-a-year side dish on Thanksgiving. Since then, there have been huge inroads; cranberry sauce, made from scratch, is often the jewel in the crown at the holiday table, not just an afterthought coming from a can. We don’t limit the dish to one dinner a year either; we serve it throughout the winter as a relish, much as we do applesauce or chutney. In fact, home cooks prepare cranberry sauce in every season -- it’s fortunate that bags of fresh berries keep nicely in the freezer for up to a year.

Cranberries may have become popular because they’re loaded with vitamin C, antioxidants and other nutrients. Or it may be that chefs and food magazines had something to do with it, using cranberries’ vibrant crimson color to add a flash of beauty to a fillet of plain grilled white-fleshed fish or their light, refreshing quality to complement rich and heavy foods such as duck, pork, turkey, wild game and even yams.

Whatever the reasons, cranberry sauce has many blessings. First, it is incredibly easy to cook. The simplest recipe is this: combine water, sugar and berries in a saucepan and cook until the berries burst. Another virtue is its versatility. Delicious as is, the sauce also lends itself to a variety of different flavors -- mix in orange peel, fresh or crystallized ginger, almond extract, cinnamon and so on. It partners well with countless ingredients -- fresh fruit such as apples, pears and kumquats; dried fruit such as raisins, dates, figs, apricots and prunes; chopped nuts or water chestnuts. Some people like the sauce spicy -- add a chopped serrano pepper to the brew. And some like it spiked with brandy (orange or ginger flavored brandy is particularly well suited), bourbon or rum.

Whether plain or combined with additional ingredients, cranberry sauce is always sweetened because cranberries are harsh. Our colonial American forefathers learned that from the Native Americans, who taught the new settlers to cook the fruit, which is indigenous to this country, with maple syrup. That’s still a rich and sensuous way to go, but honey, sugar and brown sugar are all fine too.

Those colonists quickly understood how valuable cranberries were. In fact, but for a gift of the berries to King Charles II, our War of Independence might have occurred a century years earlier. It seems that in 1677 the Massachusetts Bay colony decided to coin its own shillings, upsetting the monarch. The shrewd Yankee settlers sent the king several barrels of the ruby red fruit which, hardy survivors that they are, arrived in perfect condition. Charles was well pleased and the crisis was averted.

The fruit may not have that kind of power today, but cranberry sauce, jellied or whole-berry, commands a place of honor at the Thanksgiving table, and throughout the year.