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Pickled Beets
Boil half an ounce of peppercorns, cloves, mace, and ginger, in a pint of vinegar, add another pint when cold. Take 6 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.
A quick spiced vinegar pickle, meant to be eaten within days rather than stored on a shelf. Two details need attention: the spice quantity is ambiguous, and the beet boiling time is far longer than modern beets need.
- The spice measure is unclear"Half an ounce of peppercorns, cloves, mace, and ginger" may mean half an ounce of each or half an ounce in total. Half an ounce of each is very heavy for a quart of vinegar; a teaspoon or so of each whole spice, with a blade of mace and a few coins of dried ginger, gives a balanced brine.
- Whole spices, not groundMace is the lacy outer covering of nutmeg and is sold as blades or ground; use blades if you can find them. The ginger is most likely dried root rather than fresh, though the recipe does not say. Ground spices will cloud the vinegar and settle as grit in the jar.
- Pint and vinegar strengthIf you are reading this as a British book, a pint is 20 fl oz, so the finished brine is about a quart and a quarter; American readers can take it as two 16 oz pints. Use a vinegar of at least 5 percent acidity -- malt or cider suits beets better than distilled white.
- Two hours is too longMedium beets boil tender in 40 to 60 minutes, large ones in about an hour and a quarter; test with a skewer. Roasting them wrapped in foil at 400F concentrates the flavour better than boiling.
- Leave the skins on while cookingCleanse the beets but do not trim the root tail or cut the stalks closer than an inch, or they bleed into the water and lose colour. The skins slip off easily under cold running water once cooked.
- Cool the brine fullyThe instruction to add the second pint of vinegar cold, and to pour the brine cold over cold beets, keeps the slices firm. Hot brine on cooked beets softens them quickly.
- StorageThis is a refrigerator pickle with no processing step, so keep the jar covered in the fridge and use within two or three weeks. For anything longer-keeping, follow a current tested canning recipe.
- YieldSix medium beets fill roughly two quart jars once sliced, enough to serve eight to ten as a relish alongside cold meat.
Pickled beetroot was a long-standing fixture of the English cold table and appears in numerous general household manuals, commonly spiced with pepper, cloves, mace and ginger. Vinegar was a practical way to hold a surplus crop in usable condition. The spicing follows the older pattern of English pickle liquors, where a similar warm mixture served for walnuts, onions and red cabbage alike. The note that the pickle is "fit for use at once" distinguishes it from long-keeping pickles that were expected to mature before the jar was opened.