Not Just Christmas for Cranberries

It was William Cobbett, an 18th century British journalist, pamphleteer, political reformer and farmer who, while living in the United States, discovered the cranberry. He declared it “the finest fruit for tarts that ever grew.”

Cobbett was also the author of “Rural Rides,” a record of the distressed state of English farming — and, given the recent farmer protests in the UK a reflection of the fact that some causes of distress are apparently cyclical in nature.

Published in 1830, it’s still in print. Back in England after a period of self-imposed political exile in the United States, Cobbett vehemently objected to the proposed agricultural policies of the government of the day.

The cranberry flower

Named, some say, for the shape of the flower which is said to resemble the head of a crane, cranberries do at least share with cranes the love of a good bog.

The Native Americans of what is now New England called them “sassamensesh” or “ibimi,” and ate them with maple sugar.

They used them as a cure for dysentery and as a poultice for wounds and tumors. Today, cranberry juice is often the first informal port-of-call in the treatment of urinary tract infections.

British vs. U.S. cranberries

You may believe cranberries to be inherently American, but they also grow plentifully in the boggy lands of England’s north and in Scotland, although like the American versions of so much else, U.S. cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) are far larger.

Native British cranberries, Vaccinium oxycoccus, are known locally by many names, from “crones” or “cranes” to bounce berry, marsh-wort, moss-berry, fen-wort and fenberry.

Originally grown in the wild in what would otherwise be wasteland, peasants used them to make tarts they brought to the market to sell.

British cranberries have never been good enough to turn into the global market that the American berry has created. It in the bogs of Massachusetts, New Jersey and in Wisconsin between the Great Lakes, in Washington state, in Oregon and between Quebec and Montreal and in British Columbia that cranberries are grown, canned, dried, preserved, frozen and juiced for sales expected to amount this year to $2.32 billion.

Gathering cranberries: Then and now

Gathering used to involve wading into the waters to pick them by hand. But around 200 years ago English colonists arrived to discover cranberries in their new homeland, and cultivation to increase the quantity of berries growing in the wild began.

Today, the night before harvest, the bogs are flooded with up to 18 inches of water. Harvesting machines with spinning reels called “egg beaters” whip up the water to detach the berries from their branches. The air that cranberries contain allows them to float across the surface in a glowing scarlet carpet.

Then the berries are raked into inlets in the bogs to be siphoned up and pumped into trucks for cleaning and sorting, ready for your Cosmopolitan cocktail or breakfast juice.

The cranberries you buy fresh to make your sauce have been “dry” harvested before the bogs have been flooded.

Cranberries have thick skins that allowed the colonists to keep them long into the winter, but which means you should only sweeten your cranberries once they have cooked as sugar will toughen those skins.

Indispensable to the holidays

Cranberries are an integral part of Thanksgiving and Christmas, but despite Cobbett’s enthusiasm for them as a dessert, only as a sauce. Yet, they make plenty of wonderful meal endings.

Just consider a baked pudding with a crispy meringue-like top, a streusel cake, a Danish kringle, a winter equivalent of the multi-berry Summer Pudding and a tea bread. As well as this tart, probably not the one to have been made by English peasants heading to market.

Ingredients

125g/4oz flour

125g/4oz ground almonds

125g/4oz butter

2-3 tablespoons single/table cream

1 egg, beaten

(You know how to make a pastry with the ingredients above. Rest then roll it out to line a tin 23-25cm/9-10ins. If you want to keep the trimmings to create a lattice once you have filled the tart, all the better.

250g/8oz medium fat or curd cheese

375ml/12fl oz cranberry sauce (made in the usual way — make double for the turkey and this)

3 tablespoons sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F. Mix the cheese with half the sauce and add sugar to taste.

Spread over the pastry. Add the remaining sauce over the top. Decorate with the pastry strips. Brush them with the beaten egg to glaze and bake for 35 minutes until the pastry is gold. Serve with thick cream.