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Roots, Pickled
To pickle roots--such as beetroots, carrots, salsifies, etc.--slice them, boil them in vinegar for a short time, and flavour with the usual spices. They should not, of course, be boiled sufficiently long to destroy their crispness.
Cassell's gives the barest outline, on the assumption that a cook already knows the house pickling spice and the state of the vinegar barrel. The points below fill in what the entry takes for granted.
- The hinge: keep the biteSliced carrots and salsify need only two to four minutes in simmering vinegar, beetroot rather longer depending on thickness. The moment they lose resistance at the centre they will be limp in the jar, and no amount of chilling brings the crispness back.
- Vinegar strengthUse a vinegar labelled 5 per cent acidity — standard cider, white wine or distilled malt. Do not dilute it, and do not substitute a mild "seasoned" rice vinegar, which is often 4 per cent or less and will not preserve well even under refrigeration.
- "The usual spices"Pickling blends of this period commonly drew on black peppercorns, allspice, mustard seed, a few cloves, a blade of mace and sometimes a dried chilli or a slice of ginger, though the entry names none of them and house blends varied. A tablespoon of whole spices per pint of vinegar is a reasonable modern reading; tie them in muslin if you would rather not have them loose in the jar.
- Use a non-reactive panBoiling vinegar strips aluminium, cast iron and unlined copper, taking on a metallic taste and grey colour. Stainless steel or enamelled cast iron only.
- Beetroot on its ownBeet bleeds heavily and will stain carrot and salsify a uniform dull pink. Boil and jar it separately if you want the colours to read.
- Salsify discolours fastPeeled salsify browns within minutes. Drop the slices into water with a squeeze of lemon as you work, then straight into the hot vinegar.
- StorageThis is a refrigerator pickle, not a shelf-stable preserve — the entry gives no sealing or processing instructions. Pack the hot slices and vinegar into clean jars, cool, and keep chilled; use within a month or so. If you want jars for the cupboard, follow a current water-bath canning recipe with tested proportions.
- YieldThe entry gives no quantities; as a rough guide about 1 lb of prepared roots will fill a 1-pint jar, with enough vinegar to cover. Treat it as a condiment: a few slices alongside cold meat, cheese or a salad.
Pickled roots sit in the oldest and most practical corner of English preserving: vegetables that keep reasonably well in sand or a clamp all winter, made to keep longer still, and made more interesting, by strong vinegar and spice. Cassell's entry is written as a principle rather than a recipe -- slice, brief boil, usual spices -- which is how Victorian household dictionaries often handled techniques a cook was expected to repeat with whatever the garden had produced. Salsify, the pale tap root sometimes called the vegetable oyster for its supposedly shellfish-like flavour, was a common kitchen-garden crop in nineteenth-century Britain and appears in books of this era, before becoming rare in British and American markets in the twentieth century.