Every home has its unique spread for Thanksgiving, using family recipes and serving meals from their own traditions and culture. But mainstays like turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce are usually part of the American holiday feast.
Cranberries, which grow on shrubs in bogs, are a small, tart fruit related to the blueberry and huckleberry family. Not only was it eaten by indigenous people like the Narragansett before Europeans landed in North America, but it was also used as a textile dye. The Pilgrims may have served up a sauce made of boiled cranberries at the first Thanksgiving, but chances are, it bore no resemblance to the kind we typically find at our holiday meal. Sugar was hard to come by for those early settlers, and cranberry sauce is usually sweetened to balance the tartness of the fruit.
Still, itâs easy to see why cranberry sauce is such a popular Thanksgiving side dish. Its sweetness and acidity balance the slight gaminess of turkey, the richness of gravy, and the saltiness of other sides. Plus, it’s hard to imagine having a leftover turkey sandwich without a healthy schmear of the stuff.
