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Beet Greens
Wash young beets very clean, cut off tips of leaves, looking over carefully to see that no bugs or worms remain, but do not separate roots from leaves; fill dinner-pot half full of salted boiling water, add beets, boil from half to three-quarters of an hour; take out and drain in colander, pressing down with a large spoon, so as to get out all the water. Dish and dress with butter, pepper, and salt if needed. Serve, hot with vinegar.
A recipe for beet thinnings — the whole young plant, root and leaf together — from the era when the garden dictated the menu. The one thing to change is the clock.
- Cut the time drasticallyHalf to three-quarters of an hour is long by modern standards even for very small thinnings, which is probably what is meant here. Modern bunched beet greens with stems need 3 to 5 minutes in boiling water; if the attached roots are larger than a cherry, cut them off and boil them separately for 20 to 30 minutes, then add the leaves at the end.
- "Young beets" means thinningsThis assumes the seedlings pulled to space a row, roots and tops intact. The supermarket equivalent is a bunch of beet greens or two bunches of baby beets with tops on. A mature beet's leaves are still good eating, but the stems want a couple of minutes' head start on the leaves.
- The dinner-potA large lidded pot of the general-purpose kitchen sort; no size is given. Half full of water is generous but correct: greens collapse enormously and need room to move.
- Salting the waterNo quantity is given. About a tablespoon of salt per 4 quarts will season the greens; the recipe leaves further salt to taste at the table.
- Press hard, but not to a puckBeet greens hold a startling amount of water and will thin the butter to nothing if left wet. Press in the colander with the back of a spoon until the dripping stops, then chop roughly before dressing.
- The vinegar is not optional garnishVinegar was a common partner to boiled greens and does the work of a modern squeeze of lemon against the earthy note in beet leaves. Pass it at the table rather than dressing the dish, or the colour dulls.
- YieldA large bunch of greens, roughly 1 lb untrimmed, cooks down to serve two as a side. Plan on a generous pound per two people.
Beet greens are a thrift dish before they are anything else: gardeners sowing beets must thin the row, and this recipe is what became of the pulled seedlings. Chard and beet are the same species, Beta vulgaris, bred in opposite directions — one for the leaf, one for the swollen root — so the tops of a beet are essentially chard, and leaf beet was eaten long before the swollen root was much grown in northern kitchens. Buckeye Cookery (1877, out of Marysville and Minneapolis) was compiled from the contributions of Midwestern housekeepers. The instruction to look the leaves over for bugs and worms is a reminder that these came in from the yard rather than a crate, and the long boiling time is typical of the period — a habit later cooking has firmly reversed.