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Beet Relish
1 cup chopped cold cooked beets 3 tablespoons grated horseradish root 2 tablespoons lemon juice 2 teaspoons powdered sugar 1 teaspoon salt Mix ingredients in order given. Canned beets may be used in place of fresh ones, and bottled horseradish if of strong flavor and well drained. This is delicious served with cold meat or fish.
A five-ingredient uncooked relish that comes together in minutes. The one thing to get right is the horseradish: it carries the whole dish, and its heat is volatile.
- Grate the horseradish lastThe pungency of fresh horseradish root comes from compounds released when the cells are broken, and it begins fading within an hour of grating. Grate it immediately before mixing, and keep your face away from the bowl.
- Powdered sugarIn cookbooks of this period the term usually meant a finely ground sugar, which is not quite identical to modern cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar, though either dissolves without cooking. Two teaspoons is a seasoning, not a sweetener; it rounds off the acid rather than making the relish sweet.
- Bottled horseradishThe recipe's caveat still holds. Supermarket prepared horseradish is packed in vinegar and varies enormously in strength. Press it dry in a sieve and taste before committing the full three tablespoons.
- Drain the beetsChopped beets, especially canned ones, shed liquid as they sit. Drain and blot them or the relish will slump into pink juice within the hour.
- Chop sizeA fine dice of about a quarter inch holds its shape and gives the relish body. Grating the beets instead produces something closer to a sauce.
- Not a preserveBeyond the beets, which are cooked in advance, nothing is cooked, and there is no vinegar cure or long standing, so this is best treated as a refrigerated fresh relish, two or three days at most. The horseradish will likely be noticeably milder by the second day.
- YieldSomething over a cup, enough for several servings as a condiment alongside cold beef, ham, or poached fish.