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White Beet, to. Dress the Leaves Of
Pick the leaves, and wash them in three or four waters. Throw them into, boiling water slightly salted, and keep them boiling quickly till tender. Drain the water thoroughly from them, chop them small, and heat them in a saucepan with a little butter, pepper, and salt. They may be used as a substitute for spinach. Time to boil the leaves, twenty minutes or more.
A straightforward greens recipe that needs only one real correction: the boiling time. Everything else translates directly.
- What "white beet" isThis is the leaf beet grown for its foliage and pale stalks rather than its root — what a modern shop sells as Swiss chard, silverbeet or leaf beet. Ordinary beetroot tops behave much the same way and can be used interchangeably here.
- Twenty minutes is far too longChard leaves are tender in two to four minutes of hard boiling; the older, thicker stalks want six to eight and should go in first. Twenty minutes reduces the leaves to grey sludge and drives off most of the flavour. Cook the stems and leaves separately and stop when the leaf is limp but still green.
- The three or four watersNot fussiness. Leaf beet is grown low and grit lodges in the crinkles at the base of the leaf. Lift the leaves out of the water each time rather than pouring the water off, so the sand stays in the bowl.
- Drain hardThis is the hinge. Chard holds an enormous amount of water and a wet mass will not take butter — it will simply dilute into a puddle in the pan. Press the chopped leaves in a colander or squeeze them in a cloth before they go near the butter.
- QuantitiesThe recipe gives none. Reckon on about 2 lb (900 g) of untrimmed leaves and stalks for four people, with roughly 1 oz (30 g) of butter — greens of this kind lose a good deal of their bulk in the pot.
- SeasoningThe recipe calls for the boiling water to be slightly salted; season it at that stage rather than relying on salt added afterwards. A grating of nutmeg or a squeeze of lemon at the butter stage suits chard well, though the book does not ask for it.
Leaf beet was a kitchen-garden staple long before beetroot was widely eaten for its root, and Victorian gardening manuals often grew it for two crops from one bed: the broad white midribs cooked and served like seakale or asparagus, the green leaves treated as spinach. That double use may explain the phrasing of the title here, which deals only with the leaves. The note that the leaves "may be used as a substitute for spinach" reflects a real seasonal problem in the period: true spinach bolts in hot weather, while leaf beet stood through the summer and cropped again into autumn. Substitution notes of this kind are common in household dictionaries of the period.