Sok Żurawinowy, Cranberry Syrup for Tea from 1885
Reader ratingsWhole cranberries boiled until they burst, the juice left to clear and then cooked with sugar into a thin, bright syrup for a glass of hot tea: the sok żurawinowy of Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa’s Warsaw household book of 1885.
- Recipe makes
- About 600 ml syrup, enough for about 40 glasses of tea
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
About 3½ hours, most of it the juice standing to clear. Each glass of tea then takes a minute.
Cranberry syrup in a corked bottle and a cup of black tea colored with it, with the teapot and a bowl of whole cranberries.
The story behind the recipe
Sok żurawinowy do herbaty is a cranberry syrup made to be stirred into a glass of hot tea. Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa gives it in her Warsaw household book, in its eleventh edition by 1885: whole cranberries boiled in a little water until they burst, the juice left to clear for a few hours, then cooked briefly with sugar. The syrup, she writes, “should have a lovely color and be quite thin,” and it is so good in tea “that it entirely replaces barberry syrup.”
Three cranberry syrups
She gives cranberries three recipes on two pages. The first works best, she says, after the berries have been frosted. They are set in the oven after the bread has come out until they give up their juice, and that juice is bottled raw, without sugar, and kept in the cellar for kisiel, a thickened fruit pudding, for fruit soups in winter, or sauces “instead of lemon.” The second mixes frozen cranberries with snow, crushes them with a wooden pestle and boils the juice into a thick syrup. The third, the one for tea, is the plainest and quickest of the three.
She adds that the same syrup, taken in water, is “extraordinarily healthy” for people who are weak. That is her claim, not ours.
Read more about this recipe
Making it today
Her cranberries were probably the small bog cranberries of northern Europe. The larger American cranberries sold fresh or frozen in winter work the same way and give a sharp, deep red syrup. We keep her sugar, about 1.6 times the weight of the fruit, which sounds heavy but leaves a pourable syrup once it has boiled only briefly. A tablespoon sweetens and colors a glass of black tea. The raspberry syrup from the same chapter, Sok Malinowy, goes into tea the same way. Her book’s liqueurs, and the story of the spirit behind them, are in How Poland Made Vodka.
Cranberry syrup for tea. Pour hot water over a kwarta of whole cranberries, just enough to cover them, and set them on a strong fire so that they boil apart; pour them onto a sieve and leave them to clear for a few hours. Take two funty of sugar chopped into pieces and throw it into the strained juice, and when it has dissolved, boil it up a few times over a gentle fire. The syrup should have a lovely color and be quite thin, and it is so good added to tea that it entirely replaces barberry syrup; and for the weak, in water, it is extraordinarily healthy.
Recipe makes: About 600 ml syrup, enough for about 40 glasses of tea
Ingredients
For About 600 ml syrup, enough for about 40 glasses of tea. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for About 600 ml syrup, enough for about 40 glasses of tea.
Cranberry syrup
- Cranberries, fresh or frozen250 g
- Boiling water, about350 ml
- White sugar400 g
For each glass
- Cranberry syrup1 metric tbsp (15 ml per tbsp)
- Hot black tea250 ml
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 250 g cranberries, fresh or frozen
- 350 ml boiling water, about
- 400 g white sugar
- 1 tbsp cranberry syrup
- 250 ml hot black tea
Equipment
Medium saucepan
Sieve
Heatproof jug or bowl
Clean bottle or jar for the syrup
Teapot
Heatproof cup or glass
Instructions
Put the cranberries in the medium saucepan and pour on just enough boiling water to cover them.
Boil hard for about 5 minutes, until the berries have burst.
Pour everything into the sieve set over the heatproof jug and let the juice run through. Don’t press the fruit.
Leave the juice to stand for 2 to 3 hours, until the cloudy part has settled to the bottom.
Rinse the saucepan and carefully pour the clear juice back into it, leaving the sediment behind.
Add the white sugar and stir over a low heat until it has dissolved. Let it come to the boil 2 or 3 times over a gentle heat, taking it off the heat each time it rises, and skim off any froth.
Let it cool completely, then pour it into the clean bottle, close it and keep it in the fridge.
For each glass, make the hot black tea in the teapot, pour it into the cup or glass and stir in the cranberry syrup.
Nutrition
40calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 600 ml syrup, enough for about 40 glasses of tea
- Servings
- 40
Roughly estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for cranberries and granulated sugar, for one tablespoon of syrup; the tea adds almost nothing.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
A small batch. Keep the sugar at about 1.6 times the weight of the cranberries, as in the book. The glass ingredients are for one drink.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
Measures: Warsaw cooks of the time used the “new Polish” measures introduced in 1819, in which a kwarta is about 1 liter and a funt about 405 g. Period sizes varied, so treat these as rough guides.
Changes from the source: a kwarta of whole cranberries weighs roughly 450 to 500 g, so her two funty of sugar come to about 1.6 to 1.8 times the weight of the fruit; we make a quarter of her batch and keep that proportion. Her “few hours” of clearing is 2 to 3 hours here. Keeping it in the fridge is our addition; she doesn’t say how to store this one. How much syrup goes into each glass is ours, and her other use, a spoonful in cold water, works just as well.
Storage
Keep the syrup in a clean, closed bottle in the fridge, or freeze it. Throw it out if it turns moldy or starts to ferment.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; glassware, ice and timings need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa, Jedyne praktyczne przepisy konfitur, różnych marynat, wędlin, wódek, likierów, win owocowych, miodów oraz ciast, 11th ed. (Warsaw: the author, 1885), No. 17, “Sok żurawinowy do herbaty”, p. 131; our translation
Recipe details
- Drink
- Alcohol-free
- Drink family
- Shrubs, Syrups & Cordials
- Region
- Polish
- Era
- 19th century
- Source decade
- 1880s
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Occasion
- Christmas
- Season
- Winter