Cranberry Mousse is An Old Fashioned Recipe that's great for the holidays! (2024)

FAQs

Why do we eat cranberry sauce at Christmas? ›

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.

Cranberry sauce is a crucial component of the Thanksgiving table, where its tart, bright acidity cuts through all of the heavy turkey and gravy and stuffing and mashed potatoes.

Cranberry sauce was first offered to consumers in North America in 1912 in Hanson, Massachusetts. Canned cranberry sauce appeared on the market in 1941, allowing the product to be sold year-round. Cranberry sauce can be used with a variety of meats, including turkey, pork, chicken, and ham.

Spike cranberry sauce with citrus

Adding a teaspoon or two of fresh lemon or orange zest, a tablespoon of chopped candied peel, or even a splash of juice to your canned sauce will brighten flavors and bring in some homemade flavor.

Besides the obvious turkey, one of the symbols of the holiday is the cranberry. For many, this means canned cranberry sauce. Cranberries are a fruit native to North America. Harvest is a short few weeks in the fall, but like most farmers, they are working the ground and crop year round.

This is jellied cranberry sauce. It is an American tradition. Like so many American traditions, including Thanksgiving itself, its existence is controversial. It is a feat of engineering.

Collectively, Americans consume five million gallons of cranberry sauce during the holidays each year. This side dish has become essential to Thanksgiving menus, whether you opt to buy it (as 76% of Americans do) or make it yourself. It's hard to pinpoint exactly who invented the concept of cranberry sauce.

Is cranberry sauce supposed to be hot or cold? Either! Some prefer to have it served fresh and warm, straight out of the pot, while others need it completely cooled down to enjoy the flavours. Personally, we prefer cooled sauce.

Farm-raised and wild turkeys are also commonly found in the colder temperatures of North America. When they are baked, roasted, or smoked, they tend to dry out more easily than other types of meat. Pairing turkey with cranberry sauce or mashed potatoes and gravy allows for a delicious combination and easier digestion.

The major variation you're likely to come across is "whole berry" versus "jellied." The only difference between them is that the jellied sauce is cooked until the berries have completely broken down. They both slide out of the can as a wobbly red cylinder.

Why are cranberries a symbol of Thanksgiving? ›

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.

The arrival of cranberry sauce is more of a mystery. The cranberry isn't indigenous to the UK – they're grown in bogs mostly on the East Coast of the US – so this one would appear to be an American import from Thanksgiving Dinner.

Health Benefits

Cranberries are also rich in vitamin C and fiber, as well as the metabolism-boosting mineral manganese. And yes, you reap all these benefits whether the cranberry sauce on your holiday table is homemade or canned, jellied or whole-berry.

Slight edge to homemade. Ocean Spray's sauce is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, whereas homemade uses cane sugar. I spent an hour making the homemade cranberry sauce. Prep for the store-bought one, for those unfamiliar, goes: open can, pour onto serving plate, eat.

Like no other fruit cranberries are a symbol of Christmas time. The red berries matching perfectly with the warm glow of heat from the first, the neatly hung Christmas stockings and of course Santa's red outfit.

Cranberry sauce is traditional in New England. The "traditional" Thanksgiving dinners which were served to troops during the Civil War, WW1 and WW 2 were "New England Dinners" with turkey and cranberry sauce. The tradition spread throughout the US and was taken up by marketers when canned food became available.

To help offset some tartness in the fruit, both the Native Americans and pilgrims used maple, honey and other natural sweeteners to make the cranberries more palatable. 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.

The traditional cranberry sauce, made with sugar, did not become popularized until the 19th century. By the early 20th century, farmers began harvesting cranberries in bogs instead of dry-harvesting, which led to cranberry sauce as a Thanksgiving staple.