Best Spices for Cranberry Sauce

Cranberry sauce is a fix for a very sour berry, and the cure is sweetness plus something aromatic to round it out. Orange is the one flavoring nearly every recipe agrees on. After that, cinnamon is the most common spice, with ginger and cloves as the usual extras, and a little goes a long way: one recipe uses just 1/8 teaspoon of ground cloves for a full 12 ounces of berries. The plainest version skips spice entirely. Below: what three named recipes use, and when to add each spice.

At a glance

Seasoning	Job in the sauce	In the recipes below
Sugar, brown sugar or honey	Balances the acid	All three¹²³
Orange (zest, juice or whole fruit)	Fruity, bright background	All three¹²³
Cinnamon	Warm, sweet spice	Two of three²³
Ginger	Pungent bite	One (fresh, grated)³
Cloves	Strong, pungent depth; use sparingly	One (1/8 tsp ground)³
Salt	Seasoning	One³
Allspice, nutmeg	Optional warm notes	None of the three

The fruit

Cranberries are tart fruits with an acid taste, traditionally served as sauce or relish at U.S. and Canadian Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. That sourness is the problem every cranberry sauce recipe is trying to solve.

Three recipes side by side

	Utah State Extension¹	Texas A&M AgriLife Extension²	Stephanie Hua, KQED³
Cranberries	3 cups (12 oz)	12 oz	12 oz
Sweetener	1 cup sugar	1/4 cup honey, plus 2 pears	1 cup brown sugar
Orange	1 whole orange, peeled	1/4 cup orange juice, 1/2 tsp zest	1/2 cup orange juice, zest of 1 orange
Spices	None	1/2 tsp ground cinnamon	1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger, 1/8 tsp ground cloves
Other		1/2 cup water	1/2 tsp salt
When spices go in	n/a	Stirred in off the heat, after cooking²	Everything into the pan together³

These are the publishers’ own recipes, not a house standard. The plainest one, Utah State’s, is just cranberries, sugar and an orange, blended and heated.¹ Spice is a bonus, not a requirement.

The spices and what each one does

Orange: the constant

All three recipes use orange in some form: a whole peeled orange blended in, juice and zest, or juice with the zest of a whole orange. Lemon zest would be a reasonable twist, but none of these recipes uses it.

Cinnamon: the most common spice

Two of the three recipes use 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Neither uses a stick. A stick works fine if you simmer the sauce and fish it out before serving, but these recipes don’t call for one.

Most cinnamon sold in North America is cassia, not Ceylon, according to NCCIH.⁴ Cassia contains coumarin, which matters for heavy daily use. Germany’s BfR says a 60 kg adult reaches the tolerable daily intake at about 2 g of average cassia a day.⁵ The recipes above use 1/2 teaspoon for a whole batch. See Ceylon vs. cassia cinnamon and cinnamon sticks vs. ground cinnamon.

Ginger: pungency against the acid

Ginger brings a pungent bite. The KQED recipe uses a full tablespoon of grated fresh ginger, the biggest spice amount in any of the three.³ See fresh vs. ground ginger and too much ginger.

Cloves: a small amount goes far

Cloves are strong in aroma and hot and pungent in taste. The KQED recipe uses just 1/8 teaspoon of ground cloves against a full 12 ounces of berries.³ Whole cloves in a sachet are easier to control. See ground vs. whole cloves and too much clove.

Allspice and nutmeg: optional

None of the three recipes uses allspice or nutmeg, so treat them as variations. Allspice is a dried berry named for a flavor that resembles cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.

Nutmeg tastes warm and slightly sweet. You’ll often read that West Indian nutmeg has more flavor than other origins, but none of our sources supports ranking them. See allspice vs. nutmeg and allspice vs. cloves.

When to add the spices

The two spiced recipes do it differently:

Approach	Source
Cook the berries first, then stir in cinnamon, orange juice and zest off the heat	Texas A&M AgriLife Extension²
Put everything, spices included, in the pan together	KQED, Stephanie Hua³

Both work. Either simmer whole spices with the berries and pull them out, or add ground spices near the end and taste, since ground cloves especially are hard to take back. The Texas A&M recipe notes that the sauce keeps thickening as it cools.²

“Homemade Cranberry Sauce”, Utah State University Cooperative Extension, via MyPlate (USDA). myplate.gov · Regulator ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
“Simple Cranberry Sauce”, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, EFNEP. efnep.tamu.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
Stephanie Hua, “Orange and Ginger Spiced Cranberry Sauce”, KQED Bay Area Bites, 2011. kqed.org · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹
“Cinnamon: Usefulness and Safety”, NCCIH, 2024. nccih.nih.gov · Regulator ↩
“Cassia cinnamon with high coumarin contents to be consumed in moderation”, BfR. bfr.bund.de · Regulator ↩

Also drawn on

Cranberry (Britannica Editors, revised by Melissa Petruzzello, updated 1 Oct 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com
Allspice (Britannica Editors, updated 3 Sep 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com
Nutmeg (Britannica Editors, updated 17 Aug 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com
Clove (Britannica Editors, revised by Anoushka Pant, updated 4 Sep 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com

The Best Spices for Cranberry Sauce, and What Three Tested Recipes Actually Use