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Beetroot, Pickled
Boil half an ounce of peppercorns, cloves, mace, and ginger, in a pint of vinegar, add another pint when cold. Take six beetroots, after they have been well cleansed, and boil them gently for two hours. When cold, peel, slice, and put into a jar with the cold vinegar and spice. It is fit for use at once. Probable cost, 2s. 2d.
A straightforward cold vinegar pickle that keeps almost nothing back except its measurements. Two decisions matter: how long the beets actually need, and the fact that this is a refrigerator pickle, not a preserved one.
- The spice measurement is ambiguous"Half an ounce of peppercorns, cloves, mace, and ginger" can be read as half an ounce of each or half an ounce in total; the recipe does not say. Half an ounce of each in a pint of vinegar gives a strongly spiced brine; if you prefer restraint, use about a teaspoon of peppercorns, half a teaspoon of cloves, a blade of mace and a thumb of bruised fresh ginger or a teaspoon of dried.
- Two hours is too long for most beetsVictorian beetroot was often large, old and field-stored. Modern beets of 2-3 inches are tender in 30-40 minutes; large ones may take an hour. Test with a skewer through the thickest part. Two hours turns them soft and washes out colour.
- Do not trim or peel before boilingThe instruction to cleanse, then boil, then peel is deliberate. Leave an inch of stalk and the whole taproot intact so the beets do not bleed into the water; the skins slip off easily once cooled.
- Why the second pint of vinegar goes in coldThe recipe does not say, but boiling the spices in a single pint concentrates the extraction, and adding the second pint cold brings the whole brine down to temperature without further cooking the aromatics. The practical effect is that the brine meets the sliced beets cold, which keeps the slices firm.
- Vinegar strengthUse a vinegar of at least 5 per cent acidity — plain malt or cider vinegar suits beetroot. Nineteenth-century household vinegar varied, so do not dilute further than the recipe already does.
- This is a refrigerator pickleThere is no hot pack, no sealing and no processing here; "fit for use at once" tells you only that it needs no maturing time. Keep it covered in the refrigerator and use within about three weeks. It is not a shelf-stable preserve.
- Yield and servingSix medium beets fill roughly two quart jars. Serve with cold beef, ham, cheese or a salad of potatoes and onion — the sharp, clove-scented slices were standard supper-table furniture.
- The cost note"Probable cost, 2s. 2d." is the compiler's estimated price for the whole batch in Victorian money. It has no bearing on the method.
Cassell's belonged to a wave of large, alphabetically arranged household dictionaries aimed at the expanding middle-class kitchen, where a cook wanted a quick answer rather than an essay — hence the terse entry and the costing at the end. Pickled beetroot itself was among the cheapest and most reliable British pickles: beets stored well through winter, gave a colour nothing else on the table could match, and needed only vinegar and whole spices from the store cupboard. The spices used here — peppercorns, cloves, mace and ginger — are drawn from the common English pickling spices of the period, which recur with variations (and often alongside allspice, mustard seed or horseradish) under walnuts, onions, red cabbage and cauliflower in books of this kind. Mace, the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, was more common in Victorian pickles and made dishes than it is today, and is the ingredient most likely to send a modern cook hunting.