Cranberry Sauce
A Fall delight that comes from scarlet flooded fields and New Englanders’ ingenuity
Driving across route 58 in southeastern Massachusetts mid-October means witnessing the harvest of the many cranberry bogs that populate the area. Agrarian extensions tinted scarlet that are flooded to make the collection of the seasonal berry easy.
Cranberries become ripe in October and when they do, they need to be harvested in a matter of days. Foreseeing the time-sensitive aspect of the matter, I had booked my visit to a local bog for months in advance.
When the awaited time came, I travelled an hour and a half from Boston to Rochester to visit Hartley Family Farm, a 57 acres estate dedicated to the production of cranberries entirely run by 3 generations of Hartley’s family. We were greeted by Andy and taken around the farm on a tractor by Woody, Andy’s father, who bought-out the land with his brother from their parents in 1995 and knows a great deal about cranberries and their history.
The cranberry in New England
The red fruit we identify as cranberry comes from an evergreen dwarf shrub that is native to North America and known as Vaccinium macrocarpon in its botanical name. From the same genus we can also find Vaccinium oxycoccos, which is a different species but of similar characteristics and it is found in central and northern Europe. This explains why the English settlers that first arrived to the coast of Massachusetts accepted and introduced the American cranberries straight into their diets, as they were familiar with a similar fruit back in Britain.
Native Americans had already been eating cranberries for a long time when the first Europeans set food in New England.
Wampanoag People across southeastern Massachusetts have enjoyed the annual harvest of sasumuneash - wild cranberries - for 12,000 years. Some ate berries fresh while others dried them to make nasampe (grits) or pemmican - a mix of berries, dried meat and animal fat which could last for months. Medicine men, or powwows, used cranberries in traditional healing rituals to fight fever, swelling, and even seasickness. — Massachusetts Cranberries
The English called the plant “crane berry” as the flower made them think of the head of a Sandhill crane, a type of bird also native to North America. “It’s absolutely beautiful to see the pink fields in June when the flowers are in bloom”, said proudly Woody Hartley during the tour of his farm. But the real deal comes in fall, when the fruits turn from green to red and are ready to be picked.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, English settlers would collect cranberries that grew naturally in the many native bogs around southeastern Massachusetts. High in vitamin C, essential for the human body, cranberries became vital for preventing scurvy during long voyages. In the form of the energy-bar pemmican they were also an essential source of nutrition for fur traders during the winter months.
We proceeded to Cranberry Lake, so called from the great quantities of cranberries growing in the swamps … this was one inducement for settling here which was increased by the prospect of a plentiful supply of fish, rice and cranberries … — John Long, Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter and Trader (London: Printed for the Author, 1791)
In 1816 Captain Henry Hall, a Revolutionary War veteran, started cultivating the berry after noticing that the wild cranberries thrived when the wind blew sand over them. He began transplanting cranberry vines and spreading sand on them starting a process that many followed, specially when they realised there was a market for the seasonal berry.
Many local landowners transformed swamps and wetlands into cranberry bogs and “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.” Explains Massachusetts Cranberries.
The industry spread to further regions like New Jersey by the 1830s, Wisconsin by the 1850s, and the Pacific Northwest by the 1880s. Actually it was in Wisconsin, miles away from Massachusetts, where the current form of harvesting was invented. Flooding the bogs for picking is a relatively recent technique. Historically cranberries were handpicked in dry fields, mostly by women. When the cranberry rake, a hand-held tool with a large comb at one end and a basket at the other, was introduced production increased. It allowed leaves and stems to pass through the comb while collecting the berries in the basket. But it was not until the 1950s when a new revolutionary technique was proposed.
In Wisconsin, the current largest producer of cranberries in the US, they realised if they flooded the crop by 6 inches, the berries would start to float off the sandy soil thanks to the air bubbles trapped in them, making them easier to collect.
Water reels, nicknamed “egg-beaters” are used to stir up the water in the bogs. By this action, cranberries are dislodged from the vines and float to the surface of the water. Wooden or plastic “booms” are used to round up the berries, which are then lifted by conveyor or pumped into a truck to take them to the receiving station for cleaning. — Massachusetts Cranberries
Woody told us that for small farms like theirs it would be too much of an investment to purchase such a machine for what would be a couple of days a year of usage. This is why they rent it out to bigger farms that make extra cash the days they don’t need it. Many other family farms in the area do the same.
Nowadays, more than 90% of the crop is wet harvested. Which not only leaves fantastic photo-opportunites but also makes harvesting much more efficient. Wet harvested cranberries are normally destined to the production of juice, sauces and sweetened dried cranberries, as well as ingredients for other processed foods. The cranberry bogs are also flooded during winter as the frost helps to protect the bog from deep freeze as temperatures drop.
The other small percentage of cranberry production is done by dry harvest. It is more tedious though nowadays the berries are picked using mechanical pickers. Dry harvested cranberries are sold as fresh fruit in farmer’s markets and grocery stores. They are more valuable because the yield rate is smaller.
Woody informed us that a typical harvest on the Hartley family farm is 500 barrels. Wet picked, each barrel will for for about 30 - 35$; while dry picked the price is 60 - 80$ per barrel. Measuring per barrel is the historic way of doing it and it still stands today. Each barrel of cranberries weighs 100 lbs (45kg), though they may vary in size.
When was the sauce invented
It seems to be a myth that cranberry sauce was shared between the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag Nation in the first ever Thanksgiving dinner. Still, Native Americans were certainly the ones that first made a sauce out of cranberries. “Poet, lawyer and chronicler of the French exploration of Acadia (Maine and the Maritimes in Canada) Marc Lescarbot (c. 1570-1641) observed natives eating cranberry sauce with meats in the early 17th century.” Says writer Julia Blakely.
The English merely adapted the fruit sauces they used to make in their home country to the acidic taste of the cranberry. One of the earliest references we have of meat eaten with cranberry sauce in John Josselyn’s New-Englands Rarities Discovered (printed in London in 1672), where he narrates what he saw and learned in his visits of the “New World”.
The Indians and English use them [cranberries] much, boyling them with Sugar for Sauce to eat with their Meate, and it is a delicate sauce, especially for Roast Mutton. Some make tarts with Them as with Goose Berries. — New-Englands Rarities Discovered
By the mid 17th century, sugar was widely available in New England, masquerading the sourness of cranberries into cakes and tarts while carrying the weight of the growth of the slave trade from the West Indies. In the first known American cookbook, American Cookery (1796) Amelia Simmons recommends to serve cranberry sauce with turkey and foul and gives a recipe for it.
In 1912 a lawyer named Marcus L. Urann decided to turn around his life and buy a cranberry bog. “I felt I could do something for New England. You know, everything in life is what you do for others”, he said in an interview published in the Spokane Daily Chronicle in 1959. If helping New England meant creating a year-round product off the cranberry, he indeed did so, because he was the first person to squeeze cranberry sauce into a can.
Cranberries are picked during a six-week period. Before canning technology, the product had to be consumed immediately and the rest of the year there was almost no market. Urann’s canned cranberry sauce and juice are revolutionary innovations because they produced a product with a shelf life of months and months instead of just days. — Robert Cox, Massachusetts Cranberry Culture: A History from Bog to Table
Urann also formed a cranberry cooperative that renamed itself Ocean Spray, today the largest cranberry growers organization in the United States, making canned cranberry sauce widely available in 1941.
Even if it’s now available year-round, most people still consume the sauce seasonally, specially during Thanksgiving and Christmas, in conjunction with turkey, bringing some fresh notes to the bird’s meat.
I have never tasted canned cranberry sauce. I didn’t even know it was a polarising matter before researching for this piece. 76% of Americans opt to buy it to make their lives easier, which I get, but having made it myself, I was shocked with how easy it was.
After visiting Hartley Farm and playing around the flooded bog, I took home a bag of fresh cranberries. Two days later I made the sauce. I followed a simple recipe of 1 cup (200g) sugar, 1 cup (250ml) water, 2 tbsp orange zest and 4 cups (800g) fresh cranberries. I dissolved the sugar in the water, added the berries and the zest and cooked them for 15 minutes until they had all burst and reduced.
The color was incredible and the taste tart but sweet, perfect to lighten up meats and sandwiches. I remembered Woody mentioning that their different varietals of cranberries were all strains developed out of the universities in Boston and that made me smile. The full circle was closed. A native fruit eaten for centuries by local inhabitants that was commercially cultivated for the first time here in Massachusetts and developed into better fruits in the city that has welcomed me.
My next bite of roast chicken was accompanied by some of my home-made cranberry sauce and it tasted sweet, sour, hearty and with hints of history and seasonality. A glorious Fall American delight.
I grew up eating the canned jellied sauce which you cut into slices for serving. It tastes delicious with a dollop of sweetened whipped cream! 😋
This is so interesting! My mom's absolute favorite thing on Thanksgiving table is the cranberry sauce. I think the canned cranberry sauce that's jello-like hits certain notes of nostalgia for many. I'm excited to give this homemade recipe a go this year!