Canned or cooked cranberries? That’s a good opening question on Thanksgiving when seated next to your cousin twice removed. Go ahead and ask while the dish is being passed. Hopefully you both like each other’s answer.

What version did you grow up with? Maybe you turned up your nose or shook your head with the “no way” universal food language of “please remove that red concoction from the house.” 

Cranberry flowers from scarboroughlandtrust.org

Let’s step back a little before we pass too much judgment on this traditional holiday side dish. We all agree that cranberries look pretty; they’re shiny, red and just the right size to pop in your mouth. But a raw cranberry can be bitterly tart eaten straight up. On the bright side, as a kid when you saw the bags of cranberries show up in the grocery store, you knew Thanksgiving was getting close and Christmas was not far behind.

First, the name. The Internet says “cranberry” was originally called “craneberry,” in 1647, so named after the German word kraanebere by John Eliot, a Native American missionary from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Seeing cranberries for the first time in their new country, Eliot, and perhaps other colonists, saw the resemblance of blooming cranberry flowers, petals and the stem growing on the shrub to the head, neck and bill of a crane.

Fresh cranberries cooked with lots of sugar for a Thanksgiving side dish. (Betty Cahill, Special to The Denver Post)
Fresh cranberries cooked with lots of sugar for a Thanksgiving side dish. (Betty Cahill, Special to The Denver Post)

Back in the day, Native Americans picked lots of cranberries. Algonquins called them sassamenesh, which translates to “sour berries.” They pounded cranberries into the first-ever energy bar, combined with dried deer meat and fat, and stored them in small animal skin sacks to last several months. Tasteeee!

Cranberries have excellent antibacterial properties and were historically used by Native Americans to make poultices for wounds, to treat stomach problems and fevers. Dyes from the red skin of the fruit were used for clothing and jewelry.