Canned cranberry sauce beats the homemade kind in American preference, 28% to 20%, which is not the result most people expect from a table where everything else is cooked. The canned version is older and more deliberate than its reputation suggests. Marcus Urann first produced cranberry sauce commercially in 1912, selling locally in Massachusetts, and in 1941 it was marketed nationally by the agricultural cooperative that became Ocean Spray. Canning is what made it a year-round product rather than a six-week seasonal one, and it is why the jellied form exists at all: it is made to be slipped out of the can onto a dish and served sliced, or left intact and sliced at the table. The ridges are the can. That is the whole argument in one object. To one side of the table, keeping the can's shape on the serving plate is a joke everyone is in on and a texture nothing homemade reproduces; to the other, it is the one dish on the table that made no effort. Note that the largest single group, 27%, chose neither.