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Pickled Beets
7 beets I bay leaf 2 pints (4 cups) vinegar I blade mace 12 cloves ½ oz. whole ginger ½ oz. whole peppers Wash the beets carefully, taking care not to break the fibres, or they will bleed and lose their color. Boil them in plenty of boiling salted water for one and a half hours. Take them up, peel and cut them in slices an eighth of an inch thick, and put them into a stoneware jar. Boil one pint of the vinegar with
A straightforward vinegar pickle for beets, with a whole-spice infusion that wants a day or two in the jar before it tastes of anything. The written directions break off partway through boiling the vinegar, so the finishing steps are left to the cook's judgement.
- Don't cut the beets before boilingThis is the hinge of the recipe. Leave an inch of stem and the whole root tail on, and scrub rather than scrape. Any cut surface bleeds colour into the water and you end up with pale beets and a red pot.
- Cooking time is a guide, not a ruleAn hour and a half suits large winter beets. Small or midsummer beets can be tender in 30 to 45 minutes. Test with a skewer at the thickest point and stop there; overcooked beets slice badly.
- Vinegar strengthThe recipe does not say what kind of vinegar; malt or cider would be the likely household choices. Use a vinegar labelled 5 per cent acidity. Cheap low-acid "salad vinegar" will not preserve, and wine vinegars will shift the flavour considerably.
- The spice quantities are largeAn ounce and a half of whole peppercorns is roughly 5 to 6 tablespoons, and an ounce and a half of whole dried ginger is a substantial handful of cracked root; both are a great deal against 7 beets. Halving them still gives a pronounced, warm pickle; use the full amount only if you like the spice forward.
- Whole ginger and blade maceWhole ginger here means dried root, sold as "whole dried ginger" and best cracked with the flat of a knife before it goes in the pan. A blade of mace is a single piece of the lacy husk of the nutmeg; a scant quarter teaspoon of ground mace substitutes acceptably, though it will cloud the liquid.
- Only half the vinegar is boiledThe text breaks off after 'Boil one pint of the vinegar with', so what becomes of the second pint is anyone's guess; one plausible reading is that the spices are simmered in a portion and the rest added cold. On that reading, simmer the spiced pint 10 minutes covered, combine with the rest, and pour over the sliced beets.
- The jarA stoneware crock works, but a wide glass jar with a plastic or lacquered lid is easier to judge and will not corrode. Bare metal lids and vinegar do not agree.
- Treat it as a refrigerator pickleThere is no processing step here, and no measured heat treatment. Keep the filled jar in the refrigerator, make sure the beets stay submerged, and use within a month. For anything intended to sit on a shelf, follow a current tested canning recipe.
- YieldSeven medium beets sliced thin fill roughly two pint jars. Wait at least 48 hours before eating; a week is better.
Beets pickled in spiced vinegar were a fixture of the English and American store cupboard, and the spice list here wloves, mace, bay wsits squarely in the older tradition of pickles built on imported dried spices rather than on dill or mustard seed. Beets held their place in winter cookery because they store well in sand or a cool cellar and lose little quality doing it, and a jar of pickled slices gave a sharp, coloured relish at a season when fresh vegetables were scarce.