Cranberry sauce substitutes

The ten-minute version, which is better than any tin and needs no special equipment.

Best for

roast turkey, Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner, turkey sandwiches, baked brie and cheeseboards

12 oz (340 g) fresh or frozen cranberries, ¾ cup sugar, ½ cup water or orange juice, pinch of salt. Simmer 10 to 12 minutes until most berries have burst. Frozen berries work identically to fresh and need no thawing. It looks alarmingly thin in the pan and sets firmly in the fridge, because cranberries are unusually high in natural pectin. This is not an approximation of cranberry sauce, it is cranberry sauce.

The closest ready-made stand-in, and a classic roast-meat condiment across Britain and Scandinavia.

Best for

roast turkey, roast lamb and venison, glazing a ham, cheeseboards

Sweeter, smoother and considerably less puckering than cranberry sauce, with no berry skins, so it reads as a glossy glaze rather than a chunky relish. That matters on the plate: without the sourness it stops cutting the fat and just adds sweetness. Stir in 1 to 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and a little grated orange zest per half cup and it lands very close. Lingonberry is naturally tarter than redcurrant and needs less help.

The store-cupboard fix, using a jam with real acidity rather than a sweet strawberry one.

Best for

roast dinner in an emergency, turkey sandwiches, pork and poultry

Blackcurrant is the best match because it is genuinely sour. Damson, plum, cherry, gooseberry and raspberry all work. The lemon juice is not optional: without it you have a sweet spread and the plate feels heavier rather than lighter, which defeats the whole purpose. The pinch of salt sounds odd and makes the fruit taste more like a condiment and less like breakfast.

Frozen cherries, redcurrants, blackcurrants or mixed berries cooked down the same way you would cook cranberries.

Best for

roast turkey, roast pork and duck, game, a sauce you actually cook rather than open

Simmer a pound of frozen fruit with about 3 tablespoons of sugar per cup of fruit and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice for 8 to 10 minutes. Genuinely good, and cherry in particular is excellent with turkey and pork. Because these fruits have far less pectin than cranberries, it will stay looser and jammier and will not set into a spoonable mound, and it is softer and rounder in flavour rather than sharply astringent. Add a teaspoon of cornflour slaked in water if you want it thicker.

The traditional British alternative on a roast plate, sweet and mild rather than sharp.

Best for

roast pork, goose and duck, sausages, cooking for children

Much gentler than cranberry sauce: it soothes rich meat rather than cutting through it, so a fatty bird tastes rounder and softer instead of brighter. Add 1 tablespoon of cider vinegar or lemon juice and a strip of orange zest per cup so it still does some acid work. With pork or goose it is arguably the better condiment. With turkey it is noticeably less exciting.

Not a lookalike at all, but the pantry ingredient that does cranberry sauce's actual job best.

Best for

roast turkey and chicken, lamb, when the cupboard is bare

Intensely sour-sweet, dark red-brown and thin, so it pools on the plate rather than sitting in a spoonable heap and it looks nothing like cranberry sauce. But it delivers a sharp fruit acid against fat better than almost anything else you can open, and a teaspoon per plate is plenty. Taste as you thin it: neat pomegranate molasses is aggressive enough to overwhelm a mild slice of turkey breast.