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Garnish, Beetroot For
Wash a beetroot thoroughly. Put it into boiling water, and let it keep boiling until a fork can be put into it with ease. Take it out, drain it, and, when it is wanted, peel it and cut it into thin slices, which may be stamped out into shapes with an ordinary vegetable cutter. Time, two hours to boil. One root will garnish a large dish. Probable cost, 1d.
A plain boiled beet, cut into shapes for decorating cold dishes. The only things worth adjusting are the timing and the handling of the skin.
- Do not trim the root or topThe recipe says only to wash the beet, but the usual practice is to leave an inch of stalk and the tail root intact and not to cut into the skin before boiling. A pierced beet bleeds its colour into the water and comes out paler, which works against its use as a garnish.
- Two hours is for large old rootsTwo hours is for large old roots. Ordinary beets of 2-3 inches are likely to be done in 40-60 minutes; test with a skewer rather than watching the clock, and note that a fork sliding in easily means the beet is fully soft, which is fine here since it is only being sliced.
- PeelingCool the beet enough to handle and the skin slips off under the thumb, or with a paper towel. There is no need for a peeler, and peeling before boiling costs you both colour and flavour.
- Vegetable cutterVictorian vegetable cutters were typically small tin cutters in shapes such as stars, crescents, diamonds and rings. Aspic cutters or the smallest metal biscuit cutters do the same job; slice about 3mm thick so the shapes hold up.
- StainingBeet juice will mark a wooden board, a marble slab and your hands. Work on a plate or a non-porous board, and cut the beet last if you are assembling several garnishes.
- Yield and keepingOne root gives plenty for a large platter, as the recipe says. Cut shapes will keep two or three days covered in the refrigerator; a little vinegar over them helps hold the colour.
- CostThe penny is the book's own estimate of the period price. Beetroot was among the cheapest things a cook could put on a dish.
In the late nineteenth century a cold buffet, a raised pie or a dish of galantine was often expected to arrive under a pattern of coloured shapes, and a kitchen might keep a standing palette of them: beetroot for the red, hard-boiled egg white for the white and yolk for the yellow, cooked carrot for the orange, truffle or pickled walnut for the black, blanched parsley or gherkin for the green, all cut with the same small tin cutters. Beet's usefulness rested on a pigment chemistry the period did not name: betanin holds its colour through boiling but leaches readily into water, which is why the instruction to boil the root whole and unbroken persisted in cookbooks long after the reason for it stopped being explained.