Cheers for the Cranberry
I feel sorry for the cranberry. Each holiday season it slides out of its tin can with a gelatinous plop. Just when it thinks, “I’m free to do something amazing culinarily,” someone grabs a spoon and turns it into a jellied, crimson mush. If it’s lucky, it might show up later in a wizened, albeit more true-to-life form in muffins, scones, or salads. When it’s unlucky, it appears in my breakfast juice glass. That seems to be all that we can come up with for this amazing fruit. Long before it was known as a cranberry, this Vitamin C-rich berry was called a cowberry. As you might have guessed from the name, cows adore it. Thinking that the fruit’s pink blossom resembled the head and bill of a crane, Pilgrims later named it a craneberry. Because it bounces when ripe, it’s also referred to as a bounceberry. The hardy offspring of low, scrubby plants, the cranberry can be found in some of Northern Europe’s and America’s poorest, most acidic soils. You’ll see it growing wild …