Let’s pay tribute to ‘tiny but mighty’ cranberries

 Give thanks for cranberries. In 1877, a columnist at Harper’s Weekly magazine wrote that he/she couldn’t imagine a Thanksgiving feast without cranberry sauce. 

“The small red spheres of the fruit, crushed, sweetened…bring out all that is good in the bird’s flavor,” said the writer. “No reasonable housekeeper ever thinks of serving it (turkey) without the sauce, which in its ruddiness of color seems to have caught the very exhilaration of autumn.” Cranberry sauce “combines the sweets and sours to perfection.” 

Happy 80th anniversary wishes go out this Thanksgiving season, because it was in 1941 that Ocean Spray gave the public a jellied cranberry sauce “log” – the one that looks like the inside of its tin can container. 

The jiggly, wiggly log has become an American food icon. Can’t you just hear it swoosh-plopping onto its serving plate?

 

Journalist K. Annabelle Smith, writing for The Smithsonian magazine, said Americans will consume in excess of 5 million gallons of jellied cranberry sauce during the 2021 Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. 

Ocean Spray says it puts 200 individual berries into each 14-ounce can. There are all the makings you need for a classic “story problem” to generate turkey table talk. 

Formed as an agricultural cooperative of cranberry growers in 1930, Ocean Spray is based in Plymouth County, Mass. It currently has more than 700 member-growers, mainly in the states of Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington as well as in British Columbia, Canada. Ocean Spray accounts for 70% of North America’s cranberry production. 

Ocean Spray’s consumer educators tell us: “Cranberries didn’t come over on the Mayflower, they were already here. Cranberries are one of only three fruits native to North America, along with Concord grapes and blueberries.” 

“Contrary to popular belief, cranberries do not grow in water. Instead, they grow on vines in beds layered with sand, peat, gravel and clay,” according to the Ocean Spray spokesperson. “These beds are commonly known as bogs or marshes.”

“Today, growers use two methods for harvesting: dry harvesting and wet harvesting. The fresh cranberries that are sold in the produce section of your supermarket are harvested primarily by the dry method. These cranberries are most often used for cooking and baking. 

“Wet harvested cranberries are used mostly for processed foods, juices, sauces and relishes. Wet harvesting actually begins the night before the harvest when the grower floods the bogs with water.” 

“The next day, water reels, nicknamed ‘egg beaters,’ are used to stir up the water in the bogs. The cranberries are loosened from the vine and float to the surface of the water where they are corralled and trucked to a central receiving station.”

 The science of it is that ripe cranberries float. They have pockets of air inside them, so they just bob up to the surface. 

The air pockets also cause ripe cranberries to “bounce.” The person who discovered the “bounce test” during the 1840s was John “Peg-Leg” Webb, a cranberry grower in New Jersey,

Webb sold his lush, bouncing cranberries to captains of sailing ships going out to sea from Philadelphia. Loaded with Vitamin C, cranberries helped prevent scurvy. 

Sam Sifton, the food guru at The New York Times, says: “The two most important factors in any credible Thanksgiving feast are the cranberry sauce and the gravy. They tie every element on the plate together, acting as frame and foundation alike.”

“Cranberry sauce only enhances what is already excellent, and good gravy can cure almost any Thanksgiving ill.”