Cranberry Sauce vs. Preserves in the 1840s

What's the difference?  1/2 cup sugar.  1840s vs. modern sauce?  half the water and twice the sugar.  Elizabeth Ellicott Lea's recipe below, is compared with a nearby contemporary author, Eliza Leslie, and with a modern recipe.

Elizabeth Ellicott Lea, born in Ellicott City and lived in Sandy Spring, Maryland (both south of Baltimore), used 1 lb cranberries, 1 lb (2 C) sugar, 1/2 C water.  Back of cranberry bag: 1 C water and 1 C sugar.

In a previous post, Eliza Leslie from Philly in 1840 used 2 C brown sugar, 1/4 C water and 4 C cranberries.

Elizabeth Ellicott Lea's Domestic Cookery (Baltimore: 1846) recipes for preserves and sauce:

Cranberries.

To preserve cranberries, allow them their weight in sugar; make a syrup of the proportions of half a pint [1 C] of water to two pounds [4 C] of the sugar; boil skim it before you put the fruit in; then let them boil until clear.

To make sauce to eat with roast fowls, put three-quarters of a pound of sugar to a pound of fruit. 

[sauce -3/4 lb to 1 lb;  preserves - 1 to 1 lb; 1 lb = 2 C sugar]

For more posts on Cranberries -  Stealing cranberries in the New Jersey bogs; gathering cranberries in Regency England and Eliza Leslie's recipe for Cranberry Sauce.   HERE
 
©2014 Patricia Bixler Reber
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