Speaking of canned vs fresh cranberry sauce…
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I get that some people grew up eating canned, so that’s their tradition, so they stick with it even though fresh is better in every other conceivable way.
But how TF did that ever happen?
How did it come about that our mothers and grandmothers who cooked the thanksgiving meals in the 60s and 70s choose canned?
They baked their own bread. They made their own pie crusts. Hell, some of them even churned their own butter. Yet they got that canned monstrosity?
It might make sense if cranberries weren’t in season in the fall, but they are.
Maybe, and I’m just guessing, it was a novelty in the 50s or whatever and became trendy and then just stuck.
Only non-witches get due process.
- Cotton Mather, Salem Massachusetts, 1692
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It's a mysterie. You're right, for many people holiday dinner just isn't without the canned stuff.
It may be that taste matters less than childhood memories. From early childhood through college, I was mad for Kraft Mac 'n Cheese. Even while I was inhaling it I recognized that it was a truly awful food, but I loved it just the same. Finally weaned off it when true adulthood arrived, but even today I'll chow down a box every couple of years. It's still awful, and I still love it.
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I get that some people grew up eating canned, so that’s their tradition, so they stick with it even though fresh is better in every other conceivable way.
But how TF did that ever happen?
How did it come about that our mothers and grandmothers who cooked the thanksgiving meals in the 60s and 70s choose canned?
They baked their own bread. They made their own pie crusts. Hell, some of them even churned their own butter. Yet they got that canned monstrosity?
It might make sense if cranberries weren’t in season in the fall, but they are.
Maybe, and I’m just guessing, it was a novelty in the 50s or whatever and became trendy and then just stuck.
-
I get that some people grew up eating canned, so that’s their tradition, so they stick with it even though fresh is better in every other conceivable way.
But how TF did that ever happen?
How did it come about that our mothers and grandmothers who cooked the thanksgiving meals in the 60s and 70s choose canned?
They baked their own bread. They made their own pie crusts. Hell, some of them even churned their own butter. Yet they got that canned monstrosity?
It might make sense if cranberries weren’t in season in the fall, but they are.
Maybe, and I’m just guessing, it was a novelty in the 50s or whatever and became trendy and then just stuck.
@jon-nyc said
Maybe, and I’m just guessing, it was a novelty in the 50s or whatever and became trendy and then just stuck.
This. It was likely even before the 50s. When canned food became available in grocery stores, it was considered not only a convenience but a status statement. Much advertising described it as superior to home canned produce. The canned cran sauce was described as having beautiful designs from the ridges of the can. It sounds silly today, but it worked then.
From there, traditions were created. My mother still serves it that way. I prefer to cook mine from fresh. I wonder if sales of the canned cran have been dropping in recent years, and how much.
Besides the cranberry product, my mother preferred anything canned for veg. Only fresh sweet corn and potatoes weren't from a can. All other veg was from cans.
My maternal grandmother canned (glass jars) prodigious amounts of food. From veg to fruit to meats, she canned anything she could get. Her gardens were huge every year, and she canned it all.
They had fresh garden produce during the summer, and by August, the canning was in full swing. Day after day, no matter how hot the weather, there was canning to do. There never was air conditioning at the farm. A weak fan was a treat.By the end of canning season, Grandma had hundreds of jars on shelves all around the basement. They used those jars over the long winter and all through spring, even into early summer until the garden was producing again. The most interesting and tasty was the canned meat, mostly beef from their own cattle. It was so delicious. The canning process seemed to add to the tenderness and flavor. When Grandma served her canned beef, nobody in their right mind would miss that meal.
I don't know how Grandma learned to can so well. Her mother didn't seem to be the type to do any. She ran off with another fellow when my grandmother was in her early teens. Grandma was raised by her dad from that time onward. Perhaps it was other family members, or friends and neighbors who taught her.
It was a dangerous task on those sweltering days. Pressure cookers, aka canners, were not always safe, and Grandma used hers for much of the canning. One year, her canner exploded and burned her quite badly. I don't remember it, but heard family talk about it many times over the years. That and the labor of it all likely made many of the next generation avoid home canning, just as my mother did.
I've done some water bath canning, but never with a pressure cooker. All the retelling of Grandma's burns made me wary of using one, even though the current canners are surely safer.
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Interesting reading, Brenda!
You made me curious about the sales; I found this from the Chicago Tribune: "Nationally, the sales volume of shelf-stable cranberries, which mostly means canned products, has declined at a compound annual growth rate of more than 4 percent over the past four years, according to Nielsen data.
The $117 million in shelf-stable cranberry sales for the 12-month period ending Oct. 1 represents a decrease of more than 6 percent from the $124.8 million in the same period in 2012, the sales data show."
Here is an interesting profile piece about canned cran:
https://thetakeout.com/canned-vs-fresh-cranberry-sauce-ocean-spray-sales-data-1849743715 -
@jon-nyc said
Maybe, and I’m just guessing, it was a novelty in the 50s or whatever and became trendy and then just stuck.
This. It was likely even before the 50s. When canned food became available in grocery stores, it was considered not only a convenience but a status statement. Much advertising described it as superior to home canned produce. The canned cran sauce was described as having beautiful designs from the ridges of the can. It sounds silly today, but it worked then.
From there, traditions were created. My mother still serves it that way. I prefer to cook mine from fresh. I wonder if sales of the canned cran have been dropping in recent years, and how much.
Besides the cranberry product, my mother preferred anything canned for veg. Only fresh sweet corn and potatoes weren't from a can. All other veg was from cans.
My maternal grandmother canned (glass jars) prodigious amounts of food. From veg to fruit to meats, she canned anything she could get. Her gardens were huge every year, and she canned it all.
They had fresh garden produce during the summer, and by August, the canning was in full swing. Day after day, no matter how hot the weather, there was canning to do. There never was air conditioning at the farm. A weak fan was a treat.By the end of canning season, Grandma had hundreds of jars on shelves all around the basement. They used those jars over the long winter and all through spring, even into early summer until the garden was producing again. The most interesting and tasty was the canned meat, mostly beef from their own cattle. It was so delicious. The canning process seemed to add to the tenderness and flavor. When Grandma served her canned beef, nobody in their right mind would miss that meal.
I don't know how Grandma learned to can so well. Her mother didn't seem to be the type to do any. She ran off with another fellow when my grandmother was in her early teens. Grandma was raised by her dad from that time onward. Perhaps it was other family members, or friends and neighbors who taught her.
It was a dangerous task on those sweltering days. Pressure cookers, aka canners, were not always safe, and Grandma used hers for much of the canning. One year, her canner exploded and burned her quite badly. I don't remember it, but heard family talk about it many times over the years. That and the labor of it all likely made many of the next generation avoid home canning, just as my mother did.
I've done some water bath canning, but never with a pressure cooker. All the retelling of Grandma's burns made me wary of using one, even though the current canners are surely safer.
@brenda said in Speaking of canned vs fresh cranberry sauce…:
@jon-nyc said
Maybe, and I’m just guessing, it was a novelty in the 50s or whatever and became trendy and then just stuck.
This. It was likely even before the 50s. When canned food became available in grocery stores, it was considered not only a convenience but a status statement. Much advertising described it as superior to home canned produce. The canned cran sauce was described as having beautiful designs from the ridges of the can. It sounds silly today, but it worked then.
From there, traditions were created. My mother still serves it that way. I prefer to cook mine from fresh. I wonder if sales of the canned cran have been dropping in recent years, and how much.
Besides the cranberry product, my mother preferred anything canned for veg. Only fresh sweet corn and potatoes weren't from a can. All other veg was from cans.
My maternal grandmother canned (glass jars) prodigious amounts of food. From veg to fruit to meats, she canned anything she could get. Her gardens were huge every year, and she canned it all.
They had fresh garden produce during the summer, and by August, the canning was in full swing. Day after day, no matter how hot the weather, there was canning to do. There never was air conditioning at the farm. A weak fan was a treat.By the end of canning season, Grandma had hundreds of jars on shelves all around the basement. They used those jars over the long winter and all through spring, even into early summer until the garden was producing again. The most interesting and tasty was the canned meat, mostly beef from their own cattle. It was so delicious. The canning process seemed to add to the tenderness and flavor. When Grandma served her canned beef, nobody in their right mind would miss that meal.
I don't know how Grandma learned to can so well. Her mother didn't seem to be the type to do any. She ran off with another fellow when my grandmother was in her early teens. Grandma was raised by her dad from that time onward. Perhaps it was other family members, or friends and neighbors who taught her.
It was a dangerous task on those sweltering days. Pressure cookers, aka canners, were not always safe, and Grandma used hers for much of the canning. One year, her canner exploded and burned her quite badly. I don't remember it, but heard family talk about it many times over the years. That and the labor of it all likely made many of the next generation avoid home canning, just as my mother did.
I've done some water bath canning, but never with a pressure cooker. All the retelling of Grandma's burns made me wary of using one, even though the current canners are surely safer.
Who sez we don't talk about everything?
https://nodebb.the-new-coffee-room.club/topic/21158/presto-or-all-american?_=1672146271879
A Presto will do you a fine job, and the linked article is right about the size. Meat is one of the harder things to get just right and I find hamburger impossible (too mushy and greasy, at least for me). We don't can meat anymore.
We don't do as much as we used to, anyway. It's hard work. We probably don't do over a couple of hundred jars a year of pressure canning. Probably do another 75 or so water bath...Jellies, preserves, pickles, whatnots...
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I found this on the web. Very plausible, given the transportation at the time.
Cranberries were too delicate to transport long distances and were consumed mostly in New England. But in 1912, Marcus Urann, head of the United Cape Cod Cranberry Company, started packaging and selling canned cranberry sauce under the name Ocean Spray Preserving Company. Now cranberries could enjoy a longer shelf life and become fixtures on the Thanksgiving table far away from cranberry bogs.
I didn’t guess this originally because they’re actually are quite sturdy. But that’s now, in a world with rubber tires on paved roads.
