Canned cranberry sauce dates to 1912, when a former lawyer named Marcus Urann began canning the berries at his farm in Hanson, Massachusetts. He did it to stretch the berries’ selling season past the fall harvest.
In 2024, Ocean Spray, the cooperative Urann helped found, sold 85 million cans of cranberry sauce, according to the Bangor Daily News.
A Lawyer Buys a Cranberry Bog
New England Today’s history of canned sauce, “Plop Star,” says Urann, a lawyer, bought a cranberry bog in 1906 and set up cooking facilities in Hanson, Massachusetts. In 1912, it says, he began canning cranberries to extend the selling season.
The Wikipedia biography of Urann records that he was born in October 1873 and captained the University of Maine’s football team in 1893. It says he experimented with cranberry sauce in his farm’s packing house in 1912 and began producing it for the local Massachusetts market. The Bangor Daily News describes him as an attorney and cranberry farmer from Sullivan, Maine, and credits him with pioneering commercially canned cranberry sauce.
FundingUniverse’s company history of Ocean Spray says he packaged cranberry sauce in tins under the Ocean Spray brand in 1912, the earliest date given, and became known as the “Cranberry King.”
The idea suited the holiday table, which already had a cranberry tradition. Wikipedia’s cranberry sauce article says Amelia Simmons’s 1796 American Cookery contains the first known mention of cranberry sauce as a companion to turkey.
Anyone planning the feast may enjoy 9 Thanksgiving table classics that have been on American tables for generations, and cooks who want the oven free for other dishes can read how to free up the oven this Thanksgiving.
The sauce is also a regional habit. Wikipedia says it is served with turkey at Thanksgiving in the United States and Canada and at Christmas in the United Kingdom and Canada. Families who keep odd Thanksgiving customs can compare them with 14 strange Thanksgiving traditions that everyone pretends aren’t weird.
The cranberry belongs on a crowded plate, and 11 Thanksgiving side dishes that show up on most American tables shows what else shares the space, and humble staples have a story of their own in 15 poor people foods that even the wealthy eat.
1930: Three Rivals Form Cranberry Canners
By 1930, Urann was pitching a bigger idea. Encyclopedia.com’s history of Ocean Spray Cranberries says he proposed a partnership among rival cranberry companies, and they merged into the grower cooperative Cranberry Canners, Inc.
The Wikipedia page on the Ocean Spray cooperative says the group formed in 1930 in Hanson, Massachusetts, from the efforts of growers Marcus Urann, Elizabeth Lee and John Makepeace. FundingUniverse says Cranberry Canners was formed in August 1930, and Urann became its president and general manager. Wikipedia’s biography says he served as president from 1930 to 1954.
The cooperative kept adding products. Wikipedia reports that Cranberry Juice Cocktail was introduced in 1933. The company was renamed Ocean Spray in 1957, after it acquired the name and logo from a Washington fish company. Craisins followed as a registered trademark in 1989, the same year the headquarters moved to the Lakeville-Middleborough town line.
1941: The Log Goes National
Canning let a fall crop reach shelves all year. Wikipedia’s cranberry sauce page says canned cranberry sauce appeared on the market in 1941, allowing year-round sales, and that Ocean Spray first marketed it nationally that year. The Urann biography says the cooperative first distributed canned cranberry sauce nationally in 1941, and New England Today and the Bangor Daily News agree.
The product that reached store shelves is a sauce with a shape. New England Today says an Ocean Spray employee in the early 2000s put the can’s rounded edge on top, creating an air bubble that lets the sauce slide out with a “plop.” It also reports that 73% of respondents in one Ocean Spray poll preferred can-shaped, jiggly sauce.
The sauce keeps its place by being simple. Wikipedia describes the basic homemade version as cranberries boiled in sugar water until they pop and thicken, with variations that add orange, ginger or cinnamon.
How Much Sauce Americans Eat
New England Today says Americans consume 5 million gallons of cranberry sauce during the holiday season, enough to fill seven and a half Olympic-size swimming pools. Yearly canned sauce consumption, placed end to end, would stretch from Boston to Salt Lake City, the magazine says.
The Bangor Daily News reports that Ocean Spray sold 85 million cans in 2024 and that its cranberry sauce was served at holiday meals in more than 27 million households. Citing Adweek, the paper says Ocean Spray is the top-selling canned sauce brand in the country, with more than 70 percent of the market.
New England Today puts the cooperative’s size at about 700 growers and says it produces 70% of the world’s canned cranberry sauce. Wikipedia says the cooperative accounts for about 70% of North American cranberry production, and lists more than 700 member growers across the United States, Canada and Chile.
The Cranberry Timeline
- 1796: American Cookery mentions cranberry sauce with turkey.
- 1906: Urann, a lawyer, buys a cranberry bog in Hanson, Massachusetts.
- 1912: He begins canning cranberries to extend the selling season.
- 1930: Cranberry Canners, Inc. is formed.
- 1941: Canned cranberry sauce is distributed nationally.
- 1957: The cooperative is renamed Ocean Spray.
For a holiday table that changes little from year to year, the can is a fairly recent invention, dating to 1912. It took one lawyer, one bog and one big idea to turn a seasonal fruit into a side dish that still anchors the meal.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: Missvain – CC BY 4.0/Wikimedia Commons
