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Beetroot Preserve
Put into a preserving pan half a dozen nicely-peeled beetroots and a pint and a half of cold water, first cutting away the long tapering part, that they may lie better in the pan; let them come to a boil, and then simmer and skim for twenty minutes; add the following ingredients and boil faster for an hour more:--Four pounds of good loaf sugar, well broken, the juice of half a dozen lemons (strained), and the peel of four cut very small, some vanilla and cinnamon (about half a finger's length of each), and three or four cloves. When boiling, skim well, and when quite tender put the beetroots into a jar, but leave the syrup to boil until it is thick, when it may be strained over them. When a beautiful colour is wanted for creams, jellies, etc., this preserve and syrup will be found valuable. Probable cost, 3s. 6d.
A Victorian sweet preserve that doubles as a natural red colouring. The instructions are sound, but several of the measures and materials need translating.
- Beetroot quantity"Half a dozen" gives no weight, and the size of root intended is not recorded. If the beets are small to medium, the peeled and trimmed weight might come to somewhere around 2 lb / 900 g. Modern supermarket beets are often much larger; go by weight rather than count.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a solid cone and broken up for use, which is why the recipe says "well broken". Ordinary granulated white sugar is the direct equivalent, 4 lb / 1.8 kg.
- Preserving panA wide, unlined copper or brass pan with sloping sides. Any wide heavy-bottomed non-reactive pan works; width matters more than depth because the syrup has to reduce. Avoid bare aluminium with this much lemon juice.
- Half a finger's lengthAn informal Victorian measure for a piece of vanilla pod and a piece of cinnamon quill, about 2 inches / 5 cm of each. It is genuinely approximate, and the spicing is a matter of taste.
- Timing and textureThe twenty minutes of simmering before the sugar goes in gives the roots a head start, and sugar syrup slows the softening of vegetable tissue, so it is worth testing with a skewer before adding the sugar. The recipe itself expects them to finish cooking in the syrup, directing you to jar them "when quite tender".
- The syrupAfter the beets are lifted out, the syrup is boiled down alone until thick. Watch it closely at this stage; a strongly reduced sugar syrup goes from thick to caramelised quickly, and caramel colour will dull the crimson the recipe is prized for.
- StorageThe book assumes a cool larder and fairly quick use. There are no processing times or headspace instructions here, so treat the filled jars as a refrigerator preserve rather than a shelf-stable one, and use within a few weeks.
- Yield and useThe book gives no yield. The syrup is the real point: a spoonful tints creams, jellies and icings a deep pink.
Beetroot's place in the English sweet course is often said to be a late development, though it appears in sweet tarts in English cookery well before the nineteenth century. It was widely used as a salad and pickling vegetable through the eighteenth century, and its very high sugar content only became a subject of general interest after Continental sugar-beet refining developed in the early nineteenth century. By the time Cassell's was compiling its dictionary in the 1870s and 80s, beet preserves and beet-based colourings seem to have had some currency in domestic cookery, valued partly because the alternatives for a red tint were cochineal, made from crushed insects, or the aniline dyes then attracting real alarm in the food-adulteration debates. A preserve that was sweet, edible on its own and capable of colouring a cream or a jelly did three jobs at once, which is exactly the kind of economy Victorian household manuals liked to record. The price note, 3s. 6d., is a reminder that the sugar, not the vegetable, was the expensive part.