Did you know England, Austria and Germany all share the same national fruit?
Raymond Thacher corrals cranberries at his family bog. FILE PHOTO Did you know England, Austria and Germany all share the same national fruit? It’s the apple.
The United States doesn’t have a national fruit, but author Susan Playfair believes it should be the cranberry – and that’s embodied in the title of her latest book, "America’s Founding Fruit," published by the University Press of New England. The cranberry didn’t arrive with the Pilgrims – it was already here growing wild on Cape Cod.Playfair spoke to the Orleans Historical Society last week and recapped the berry’s history.
“My great-grandfather owned a cranberry bog and I grew up in a town where people worked for Ocean Spray. The cranberry is our iconic fruit,” Playfair declared. “It was considered so valuable it was given as a gift to King Charles in 1677 when the colonists were trying to make peace with him.”
That’s an interesting bit on unintentional (we believe) wordplay on Playfair’s part. As it happens, the A.D. Makepeace Company of Wareham is the largest cranberry grower in the world, with 2,000 acres under cultivation. Unfortunately, Massachusetts is no longer the U.S. cranberry capital. Wisconsin now grows 60 percent of the U.S. crop and has named the cranberry its state fruit.“Native Americans used it as a poultice and for urinary tract infections,” Playfair reported.
Fortunately we’ve found better things to do with cranberries. Playfair said there are only three native cultivated fruits -- the other two are the blueberry and the Concord grape. Blueberries and cranberries are both in the genus Vaccinium. The cranberry is Vaccinium macrocarpon, which means large fruit. There is also a small-fruited cranberry.
“The early settlers referred to it as the craneberry. The Pilgrims were a little fearful of it but the Native Americans showed them how to use it,” Playfair said.
The Pilgrims didn’t actually eat cranberry sauce at the first Thanksgiving, as there was no such thing at the time. It wasn’t until 1911 that Marcus Urann of Hanson invented cranberry sauce.
“He was a lawyer. He bought six acres and started growing [cranberries] and quickly realized canning was coming into being and he could make a sauce and can it,” Playfair said.In 1930 he formed the Ocean Spray Cooperative, which is still headquartered in Lakeville. “He needed more berries. Exchanges existed. He realized he could put them together in a cooperative,” Playfair said.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The cranberry was a just wild fruit in the dune bogs of Cape Cod for over a century. Even so, it was featured in "American Cookery" by Amelia Simmons, published in 1796, the first American cookbook.
Then in 1816, Captain Henry Hall of Dennis transplanted some vines to a fenced-in piece of his property and became the first man to cultivate cranberries.
“He took some vines and roped off an area to keep the cows out,” Playfair said. “It did produce a crop the next year. After a few years he was able to ship whole cranberries to the New York market. The neighbors soon realized this was something to make money with.”Soon another Dennis sea captain delved into the cranberry business.
“Captain Eli Howes noticed one cranberry was hardier than the others and he called it the Howes Berry because it lasted longer in shipping,” Playfair said.
The Howes Berry is still grown today, as is Early Black, discovered by Cyrus Cahoon in 1847. His cousin Alvin Cahoon is often credited with creating the first commercial cranberry bog – in 1846 in Harwich near Seymour Pond – although Playfair credits one Ben Thomas with the first bog, in 1835.
Playfair notes that cranberries were hand-picked, often by immigrant children, through the early 1800s. Scoops weren’t used until the 1850s. During that time cranberries were taken aboard ships to prevent scurvy.
Cranberry production on Cape Cod peaked in 1895, with 3,355 acres in cultivation. That same year 3,766 acres were cultivated in Plymouth, and then the heart of berry production began to move west.
Playfair noted that cranberries don’t grow in water. Organic bogs are flooded to protect the berries from pests; conventional bogs are flooded for easier picking.
“A breaker frees the berries from the vines allowing the berry to float because they are hollow inside,” she said. “Conventional berries are mostly made into juice. That’s about 95 percent of the market. Organic harvest is a dry harvest and it’s much more difficult and labor intensive.”
Cranberry vines grow flat on the ground and send up shoots that flower and then bear fruit. Sifting sand atop the vines when there is ice on the bogs stimulates the shoot growth.
“The folklore as far as health benefits is now being proven,” Playfair said of cranberries. “They’re used in cancer treatments and benefit everything from Alzheimer’s to cardiovascular disease. The biggest market is juice. People today are concerned with the sugar content, but the best way to deal with that is to make your own juice and use as little sugar as you want.”And making your own is a very American thing to do.