Cranberry Companion

“Clark and Baker have brought out a charming, informative cookbook with wonderful recipes,”
–Janeen Sarlin, The Southampton Press

James Baker contributes a detailed and well-organized story about cranberries from the pre-colonial period to the present day. Liz Clark’s marvelous and mouthwatering recipes will alert everyone to the nutritional and culinary value of the cranberry.

Cranberries are more American than apple pie. It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce, and Christmas dinner in America would be incomplete without the traditional cranberry condiment. Yet while the Pilgrims undoubtedly brought a memory of apple pie (and apple pie memories were all they had in 1621) to the “First Thanksgiving,” they weren’t having similar thoughts about cranberry sauce. Neither written nor oral tradition can enlighten us whether the berries played any role at all in that famous three-day feast in 1621, and if they did, it wasn’t in the form of our familiar sweet sauce.

Cranberries have played a supporting role in American cuisine for so long that we take the familiar dark red fruit for granted, vaguely assuming that they were eaten from the time Plymouth Rock was still news. However, unlike the starring roles enjoyed by corn, pumpkins and turkeys in the colonial records, cranberries humbly avoided the spotlight of history. They crept into colonial life unheralded, and appear incidentally in early records with no mention as to their first discovery or use.

Cranberry Companion was a featured title for BEA’s Cookbook Expo.

The American Institute of Wine and Food featured Liz as one of the “Leading Chef’s of the Mid West” in 1989. Author of many cookbooks including FRESH BREAD COMPANION, Liz co-authored APPLE COMPANION and contributed to the James Beard Foundation’s THE JAMES BEARD CELEBRATION, edited by Barbara Kafka.

After his appointment as Director of Research at Plimoth Plantation in 1978, James Baker helped design the Plantation's critically acclaimed first-person role playing program. Mr. Baker's research with pilgrim period recipes helped him prepare an accurate “First Thanksgiving” dinner for Julia Child on “Good Morning America” in 1983.