Pick the cranberries clean, seeing that no stems, sticks, or dead leaves are left among them. Put them into a cullender, or sieve, and wash them through two waters. Cook them in a porcelain-lined, or enameled stew-pan, without any additional water. The water that remains about them after washing is quite sufficient for stewing them properly. No stewed fruit should be too thin or liquid. Keep a steady heat under the cranberries, stirring them up from the bottom frequently: and when they are soft, mash them with the back of the spoon. When they are quite shapeless, take them off the fire, and while they are very hot, stir in, gradually, an ample quantity of nice brown sugar. They require much sweetening. Season them with nothing else. Their natural flavor is sufficient (if well sweetened) and cannot be improved by spice, lemon, or any of the usual condiments. Always buy the largest and ripest cranberries. The best things are cheapest in the end.
In stewing any sort of fruit, do not add the sugar till the fruit is done, and taken from the fire. If sweetened at the beginning, much of the strength of the sugar evaporates in cooking; besides rendering the fruit tough and hard, and retarding the progress of the stew.
In America, sweet sauce is eaten with any sort of roast meat. Send it to table cold. For company, put it into a blanc-mange mould, and turn it out in a shape, first dipping the mould, for a minute, in warm water to loosen it.
APPLE SAUCE.—
Get fine juicy apples—bellflowers are the best for cooking. Sweet apples cook very badly—becoming tough, dry and tasteless. Green apples, if full grown, cook well, and have a pleasant acid.
For sauce, pare, core, and quarter or slice the apples. Wash the pieces in a cullender, and put them to stew, with only water enough to wet them a little. Apple stews that are thin and watery are disgraceful to the cook, or to the cook's mistress. Let them stew till you can mash them easily all through. Then take them off the fire, and sweeten them, adding the seasoning while the apples are warm. Season with rose-water, lemon juice, nutmeg; or with all these if for company. If you can get fresh lemon-peel, cut it into very thin slips, and put it in to stew with the apples at first. It is still better, and little more trouble, to grate the lemon-peel.
Fruit for pies should be stewed in the same manner as for sauce, and not sweetened till taken from the fire. Let the paste be baked empty in large deep plates, and when cool, filled to the brim with stewed fruit. A pie, (as we have seen them,) only half or one third full, looks very meanly—and tastes so.
All these fruit-sauces are good receipts for stewing fruit for pies or any other purpose.
We advise all families to have, among their kitchen utensils, bain maries, or double-kettles, putting the article to be stewed in the inner kettle, and the boiling water in the outside one. They are to be had of all sizes at the furnishing stores. They are also excellent for custards and boiled puddings.