Berried treasure Print E-mail
Over 400 years ago, Native Americans were using these ruby-red berries as a natural preservative. The Pilgrim Fathers landing in New England soon learned to recognise their qualities as an accompaniment to meat and, as Claire Hopley reports, today vitamin C-rich cranberries are still providing the inspiration for a wealth of culinary delights
Vivid is the only word to describe October in Massachusetts. The sky is almost always brilliant blue. The sun glows on mounds of bright orange pumpkins waiting for Hallowe'en, on shiny apples in hillside orchards, on hills and valleys splashed with red and yellow, gold and rust paintbox shades of autumn leaves. It's dazzling - and especially so in the south-east, around Plymouth where Cape Cod reaches its arm out into the Atlantic.

This is cranberry country, and in October sheets of crimson cranberries seem to carpet the ground. But actually, they are floating on the flooded bogs where they grow. The bogs need the protection of the forest, so trees stand sentinel nearby, their colours reflected in the ponds - wherever you look is splashed with colour.

Almost one-third of the US's 5.83 million barrel crop of cranberries grows in this one small region and is responsible for putting on this display, so it's no surprise that the cranberry holds a special place in the Massachusetts heart. While it grows in acidic soils all over northern North America, south-eastern Massachusetts claims the ideal conditions: low-nutrient soil, a long, cool growing season so the berries don't ripen quickly and lose their characteristic acidity, and freezing winters covering the plants in a coating of ice that protects them from the wind.

Cranberries were growing wild here in 1620 when the Pilgrim Fathers landed in Plymouth. They played an important part in the Native American diet because they contain benzoic acid, a natural preservative. When pounded with meat and fat from wild animals, they helped to create a sort of sausage called pemmican: this was a crucial winter food because it survived unspoiled throughout the months of snow.

Vitamin C also occurs naturally in cranberries, so when shipping became an important Massachusetts industry in the 18th century, boats always carried barrels of them packed in water. Eaten as sauces or relishes, cranberries helped to protect the sailors from scurvy, a debilitating and even deadly illness caused by vitamin C deficiency.

On land, too, cranberries have always been a mainstay. Tradition has it that they appeared at the first Thanksgiving dinner - a get-together between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans who had helped them get established, not least by introducing them to the foods of the region.

While nobody who was at the dinner ever described precisely what was eaten, Edward Winslow wrote to a friend in England explaining that four men had been sent to shoot birds: "The four, in one day, killed as much fowl as with a little help beside, served the company almost a week... At which time many of the Indians coming amongst us, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer."

Since we know that Native Americans mixed berries with game and that 17th-century English people were already fond of serving meat with sharp, fruity sauces, it is easy to imagine that a cranberry sauce or a stuffing dotted with the bright berries could have been served with the venison and wild fowl on that festive table.
Many uses

Certainly, cranberries have remained an autumn and winter staple in New England. Unlike most berries, they stay fresh for weeks after they have been harvested, and they emerge from freezing as firm and bright as they were before. They excel in pies as well as sauces - and pies used to be essential fare in New England. Before the days of packaged cereals, pies were eaten at breakfast and they appeared again later, at dinnertime.

Housewives made batches of 30 or 40 at a baking - so many that eventually they had to invent a new piece of furniture, called a pie closet, to store them all. Typically, they liked to keep several varieties on hand. Along with apple, mincemeat, and blueberry, cranberry pie was a favourite, sometimes made with an all-cranberry filling, sometimes a mixture of cranberries and raisins.

The first cookbook ever produced in America with the needs of American housewives in mind was American Cookery, written and published by Amelia Simmons in 1796. Her recipe for cranberry pie specifies a sweetened buttery pastry that no doubt complemented the tart berries. Notably she refers to them as "cramberries". This spelling reflects a common mispronunciation, but it does draw attention to the name.

What does the 'cran' part of the word refer to? One suggestion is that it is a form of 'crane' and the berry took its name from its flower, which can (just about) be taken to look like the head of the bird. Alternatively, it is believed that the word comes from a German source, where cranes commonly ate the tiny European relatives of the berries. In America they attracted bears, so they were sometimes called bearberries, or bogberries because they naturally grow in turfy bogs.

Today's commercial growers still grow them in bogs. One way to harvest them is to send in machines that look like oversized lawn mowers fitted with large comb-like fronts. The combs strip the berries off the plants. The berries go into a bag on the machine and then into boxes. Often helicopters take them away because trucks could damage the structure of the bog. This method is called dry harvesting and is used for berries that will be sold fresh.

The dramatically beautiful 'wet harvest' yields the berries that become juices and canned sauces. The method is to flood the bog with water from a nearby pond. A machine that works like a giant eggbeater rides along beating the vines to release the berries, which then float to the surface and crimson the landscape. The next step is to put plastic booms into the water to corral the berries to one side of the bog, from whence they are pumped straight into a waiting truck, which takes them to a juicing plant.

Until the last few years, these two harvests, both occurring from about the second week of October until the end of the month, were the only time the berries were picked. But now growers have started to wet-harvest some berries in mid-September, when they are still yellowy-white. These berries become white cranberry juice - a new milder drink that is increasingly popular, not least for mixing with other fruit juices or in cocktails.

Bounce-ability

Whatever the colour of the berries, the secret of the wet harvest is that each cranberry contains a tiny pocket of air so it can float. It can also bounce - as long as it is in good condition. Processing plants take advantage of this characteristic by letting the berries fall down a series of steps: those that don't bounce are damaged and so they are rejected.

The Massachusetts cranberry region, which stretches from the south-eastern part of the state and over Buzzard's Bay and on to Cape Cod, is easily reachable in little more than an hour's drive from Boston. If you are in the area during the harvest season you cannot miss seeing the brilliant bogs, and you are quite likely to run into one of the weekend cranberry fairs where local people celebrate their most famous crop. On sale you are likely to find all sorts of homemade wares including textiles with cranberry motifs, candle and flower arrangements that use the colour and buoyancy of the cranberry to charm the eye, and, of course, treats from the kitchen.

Along with blueberries and Concord grapes, cranberries are one of only three fruits botanically native to North America. Now, however, their popularity has taken off in the UK, so take advantage of them to make something delicious. Cranberry recipes like the ones shown here are easy because the fruit requires no peeling or trimming.

Claire Hopley is a writer and editor who divides her time between Massachusetts, USA and Chester, England.

Please visit our recipe index section for some tantalising berry recipes.
 
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