Cranberry Sauce: A Tribute

Originally published November 25, 2020. Happy Thanksgiving!

Too often, my culinary adventurousness extends no further than splashing extra Frank’s RedHot onto my Taco Bell order. But every so often, I conjure my inner Julia Child and tiptoe into the kitchen, careful not to disturb the natural balance of the universe.

My contribution to Thanksgiving is a mere one dish, but one that provides a needed splash of color and refreshment. That dish? The eternally controversial cranberry sauce, the red-headed stepfruit of any holiday feast.

Some prefer it from a can: Open the lid, flip upside-down and out plops a substance with the color of a human heart and the spine of a bureaucrat. Better eat it fast, before it loses its “texture.” There is a special name for people who prefer this kind of cranberry sauce. They are called wrong. In our family, it’s homemade or nothing.

It is never too late to start distancing yourself from anyone who prefers this form of cranberry sauce.

Everyone remembers their first cranberry sauce experience. Mine occurred as a young boy at my grandparents’ house. I was watching television in the living room when I heard what sounded like an argument coming from the kitchen. Grandma and grandpa were disagreeing on how much sugar to add to the cranberries.

Finding their elevated tone unsettling, six-year-old Brad marched into the kitchen and went straight for the jugular. “Please don’t get divorced,” I begged. Grandma sincerely assured me they would not, and through time I realized my worry was misguided. If a couple is to divorce because of food, it should be over an entrée and not a side dish.

Following grandma’s death in 2000, I filled in for many years to help grandpa with the assembly of the sweet, dark-red creation. We closely followed “Aunt Edith’s” recipe, which called for cranberries, apples, pineapple, raspberry Jell-O and, yes, plenty of sugar. I know nothing else about Aunt Edith, other than she must have had at least one niece or nephew.

My primary responsibility was to turn the hand crank that crushed the ingredients down into their proper texture. That’s right, we used an old-fashioned, manual, metal hand crank, a nod to the best secret ingredient of all, elbow grease.

Throughout the process, some of the liquid would run down the handle and collect in a giant bowl underneath. This was not to be wasted, but rather savored as a postgame refreshment. A young man learns a lot about himself from drinking cranberry-pineapple-apple juice, namely how far he can stray from the bathroom without risking certain humiliation. It can be a fine line, like a runner leading off from first base: Four feet and you’re OK; five feet and it’s straight to the showers.

After mixing everything together and allowing plenty of time for the ingredients to congeal, it is ready to taste. Walnuts are optional, but, if added, should be gently sprinkled on top as opposed to blended in, should someone in the family be allergic. You don’t want the steady praise you are sure to receive to be interrupted by a sudden dash to the hospital.

Much better!

Cranberry sauce being an integral part of our family holidays, I was curious to learn more about its origins. As expected, it was fascinating!

It dates back to the very first Thanksgiving. Pilgrims, in a show of gratitude for the Indians’ hospitality, threw together a last-minute combination of various fruits and berries. However, things did not go as smoothly as they had hoped, which resulted in repeated delays.

Growing more perturbed with each passing minute, Squanto eventually poked his head in the kitchen, only to find the Pilgrims huddled in frantic confusion. It didn’t take long for Squanto, shrewd survivalist that he was, to identify the problem. The Pilgrims had forgotten to plug in the blender. (Hence the centuries-long shift to the manual hand crank.)

Squanto later recalled the incident in his memoir. “It was an innocent mistake, but it did little to quell the distrust among certain members of the tribe, curious as to whom exactly invited these ‘funny hats’ over for dinner. Anyway, things went pretty smoothly after the blender snafu was straightened out, save for one Pilgrim mistaking the garbage disposal for a light switch. I’m sorry, but nobody wants to hear such a wretched sound right before eating.”

The sudden noise also risked attracting the attention of the area health department, which the group assumed would be all too eager to shut down their gathering on account of Covid-1619 violations. Luckily, being a holiday, health officials earned time-and-a-half regardless of whether they left the office, so the First Thanksgiving was spared.

And what, you ask, did Squanto and the Indians get for all their trouble? The longest World Series drought in baseball. History is cruel.

So this year, whether your Thanksgiving table is seeking refuge from the gloopy mush-mouth of TurkeyMashedPotatoesStuffing or is looking to oil up a conversation run dry, be sure to give thanks to your tiny, red, tart, undervalued friend known as the cranberry.