The Story Behind Thanksgiving's Most Polarizing Dish (2024)

FAQs

Why do we eat cranberry sauce with turkey? ›

Turkey is often dry, salty, and bland, which makes it the perfect partner for something sweet and moist. Cranberries are not overly sweet. Their tartness pairs well with the more bland-tasting turkey. Our palates would be bored by singular tastes.

Cranberry sauce or cranberry jam is a sauce or relish made out of cranberries, commonly served as a condiment or a side dish with Thanksgiving dinner in North America and Christmas dinner in the United Kingdom and Canada.

Urann started selling his canned cranberry sauce in 1912 under the name Ocean Spray Preserving Company. In 1930, he joined forces with two competitors, independent cranberry growers John Makepeace and Elizabeth Lee, to form a cranberry cooperative. The co-op began offering canned cranberry sauce nationwide in 1941.

Actually, cranberries graced the table of the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving. Cranberries are one of the few fruits (blueberries and Concord grapes are among the others) that are native to North America.

Seasonal availability. One of the reasons cranberries have become synonymous with Thanksgiving is their seasonal availability. Harvested in the fall, cranberries are at their peak during the holidays time.

Cranberry sauce — along with turkey, sweet potatoes, and pie of course — is a must on every Thanksgiving table. Sweet and tangy with a brilliant jewel tone, it's the perfect complement to the relatively mild-flavored turkey and turkey sandwiches.

Glittery, ruby red cranberry sauce is an essential part of any Thanksgiving meal. Not only does its color shine among the browns and beiges of side dishes like stuffing and mashed potatoes, but its sweet-tart flavor offsets the richness of roasted turkey, macaroni and cheese, and buttery yams.

5. Cultural Symbolism: Across cultures, Cranberry Red takes on diverse meanings. In Eastern traditions, it symbolizes good fortune and joy, while in Western cultures, it may evoke associations with passion and vitality. This cultural interplay adds a fascinating dimension to the color's significance.

Why Do We Serve Cranberry Sauce at Christmas? Following in the footsteps of America, we traditionally add cranberry sauce to our plates at Christmas to add a sweet and tangy taste to our turkey.

The Pilgrims might have been familiar with cranberries by the first Thanksgiving, but they wouldn't have made sauces and relishes with the tart orbs. That's because the sacks of sugar that traveled across the Atlantic on the Mayflower were nearly or fully depleted by November 1621.

Why is the label on cranberry sauce upside down? ›

Ocean Spray says this is to get the cranberry sauce out in one intact piece. “The rounded part of the can that looks like the bottom has an air bubble in it,” Ocean Spray's representative explains. The bubble is there so you can “break the seal the sauce makes with the can.”

According to Wick, the tart fruit became popularly used to create cranberry sauce for turkey and other types of meat in the late 17th century. Within a hundred more years, cranberry sauce became a staple dish in the U.S., with its popularity taking off even more throughout the 19th century.

The Pilgrims gave this fruit the name "crane berry" because its pink blossom reminded them of the head of a crane, a large wading bird. Over the years its name has been shortened to cranberry.

Pilgrims and other early settlers ate the berries to fight off scurvy, unaware that it was the vitamin C inside that made the berries good medicine. "They thought that sour things would take salt out of their body," says Wall, "and they thought salt was causing scurvy.

Packed with antioxidants

The anthocyanins found in cranberries may have anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory effects. They may also: Protect against liver disease. Lower blood pressure.

In winter, turkeys forage on fruits that persist above the snow such as hophornbeam, burdock ash seeds, red cedar berries, grapes, highbush cranberries, beech and hemlock buds, and waste grains from spread manure and corn silage.

If cranberries were eaten, it was probably as a dish called pemmican–crushed cranberries and dried meat (yum!) Sugar was not widely available at the time so cranberry sauce, as we know it, was most likely not a part of the feast.