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In Season: Cranberries

Posted by Alaina Browne, November 23, 2008 at 12:00 PM

©iStockPhoto/Professor25

The blueberry's tart cousin, the cranberry signals the arrival of the holiday season and will be found on most of our Thanksgiving tables. According to the The Oxford Companion to Food, it's very likely that cranberries were a part of the first Thanksgiving feast:

"When the Pilgrim Fathers arrived in N. America they found a local cranberry, V. macrocarpon, which had berries twice the size of those familiar to Europeans, and an equally good flavour. American Indians were accustomed to eating these fresh or dried, and adding the dried fruits as an ingredient in Pemmican (a dried, preserved meat product)...It was no dobut these large American cranberries which, at an early stage in the evolution of Thanksgiving Day dinner, were made into sauce to accompany the turkey, which became established as its centerpiece."

Celebrate Thanksgiving with some of our favorite cranberry recipes.

Cranberry Recipes

• Everyday Food's Basic Cranberry Sauce
• Cranberry Sauce With Champagne and Currants
• Cranberry, Pear, and Ginger Chutney, from 'Bon Appétit'
• Lidia Bastianich's Cranberry-Quince Chutney
• Apple Cranberry Crisp with Pecan Topping
• Gourmet's Cranberry Almond Crostata
• Cranberry Zingers
• Baking With Dorie: All-in-One Holiday Cake

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Tags: cranberries, In Season, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving ingredients and techniques