Canned cranberry sauce: the true love or true enemy of holiday dinner fans everywhere.
People have some d**n hot takes on canned cranberry sauce. Whether it’s good or bad remains to be seen, but we do have one question: why on earth are they designed to be opened upside down?
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Let’s find out.
Ah, canned cranberry sauce.
Love it or hate it, it’s a hot topic around the holidays (you know, other than politics and the state of the world in general). People have some passionate opinions around the quality of canned cranberry sauce, you know?
It has some incredibly vocal fans.
I think of cranberry in can fans like candy corn fans: most people hate their favorite thing, so they defend it to the death.
As a candy corn and canned cranberry sauce fan, I feel secure in that assumption.
Like, people LOVE the stuff.
Which is fair, because it’s straight-up delicious. I’ve had homemade cranberry sauce and I’ve had canned, and I’ll take the canned any day of the week. It’s just BETTER, people.
(Lingonberry sauce is better than both, though. Sorry.)
But my question is: why is it always upside down?
When you get a can of that classic Ocean Spray cranberry sauce, you open it from the bottom. It’s just something you do, right? It’s tradition. You parents did it, and their grandparents did it.
Turns out, there’s a reason it’s upside down.
The typical can top is on the bottom on a can of cranberry sauce. Why? Simple science: there’s a pocket of air at the “top” (aka a traditional can’s bottom). You open the side that doesn’t have that pocket of air.
Basically, it’s to prevent suction.
That air pocket allows for the cranberry to slide straight out of the can without you having to do a lot of work. Well, theoretically. I actually opened a can of that yesterday, and it did not work like that.
Anyway, that’s the science behind the upside down can.
Last Updated on November 29, 2021 by Brittany Rae
