John Lennon Confirmed In A 1980 Interview He Repeated The Words Cranberry Sauce At The End Of The Song “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

National Cranberry Relish Day is celebrated on November 22 as the perfect precursor to Thanksgiving. Born out of love for one of three surviving Native American fruits, the day honors the quintessential American pairing of cranberry and Thanksgiving.

• 1647 – Missionary John Elliot names the fruit ‘cranberry,’ derived from the German ‘kraanbere’ and English ‘craneberry.’
• 1683 – American settlers make the first-ever cranberry juice.
• 1796 – The first acknowledgment of a cranberry sauce recipe can be found in the 1796 cookbook American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, which calls for serving roast turkey with “boiled onions and cranberry sauce,” according to The Washington Post.
• 1816 – Veteran Henry Hall cultivates cranberries for the first time in Dennis, Massachusetts.
• 1820s – Revolutionary War Veteran Henry Hall formally cultivates and ships cranberries to neighboring states for the first time.
• 1868 – A standard 100 lb. barrel of cranberries sold for $0.58 in Philadelphia, PA.
• 1860s – Reverend Benjamin Eastwood publishes a book on cranberry cultivation after a boom in sales during the Civil War.
• 1880s – A New Jersey grower named John “Peg Leg” Webb discovered that cranberries bounce.
• 1900s – originated in New England during the early 1900s, cranberry relish is a traditional part of many families’ Thanksgiving dinners.
• 1912 – Canned cranberry sauce got its start in 1912, when cranberry growers Marcus L. Urann and Elizabeth Lee began working together to create a jellied sauce made by boiling bruised berries from the bog (say that 3 times fast).
• 1920 – Wisconsin grower John Gaynor and fruit broker A.U. Chaney establish the Wisconsin Cranberry Sales Company to organize cranberry trade across the U.S.
• 1941 – Canned Cranberry sauce became a Thanksgiving staple across the country
• 1950s – NPR correspondent Susan Stamberg introduces the country to her mother-in-law’s signature cranberry relish recipe.
• 1959 – Thanks to a significant health scare, Americans have a cranberry-less Thanksgiving for the first time.
• 1980 – John Lennon confirmed in a 1980 interview that he repeated the words cranberry sauce at the end of the song “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
• 1994 – The Cranberry was made the official state berry of Massachusetts.
• 2015 – Eat A Cranberry Day is first mentioned and celebrated on the World Wide Web.
• 2021 – If you strung all the cranberries produced in North America in 2021, they would stretch from Boston to Los Angeles over 565 times.
• Legend has it that Pilgrims served cranberries, along with wild turkey and succotash, at the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
• Americans consume 400 million pounds of cranberries each year. Twenty percent are eaten during Thanksgiving week.
• The cranberry is one of three fruits native to North America. The other two are Concord grapes and blueberries.
• There are approximately 333 cranberries in a pound, 3,333 cranberries in one gallon of juice, and 33,333 cranberries in a 100-pound barrel.
• Cranberry juice contains a chemical that blocks pathogens that cause tooth decay
• 90% of all cranberries are wet harvested. The bog is flooded, then a great big eggbeater knocks the berries off the vine. They float up to the top of the water where they are scooped up.
• Cranberries can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 1 month or in the freezer for up to 9 months.
• Massachusetts-based Ocean Spray, the largest producer of cranberry products in the U.S., produces about 70 million cans of jellied cranberry sauce each year, 85 percent of which are sold during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
• Jellied cranberry sauce from a can (the log) is most preferred by consumers, totaling 75% of overall cranberry sauce sales.
•  It takes about 200 cranberries to make one can of cranberry sauce.
• Why does it wiggle? Because cranberries have a high pectin content, which causes the fruit to “gel.” Pectin is a key ingredient added when making jellies or jams.
• There’s a reason the cans are upside down. The rounded edge, which is typically at the bottom of canned goods, is at the top of cranberry sauce. According to an Ocean Spray representative, “The rounded end of the can is filled with an air bubble vacuum, which makes it easier to get the sauce out.”
• In their rawest, purest form, cranberries are great for oral and dental hygiene.
• Cranberries are 90% water.

Sources:

Editor’s Note: Since COVID, several websites once used for research have shut down. The information remains accurate, but the sources no longer exist.

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