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Pickled Beets
Cook 2 qts. beets until tender. Boil and pour over the cooked beets the following: 2 C vinegar 1 C water 1 C sugar Salt May be used immediately or canned.
Mrs. W. J. Dillon.
A plain vinegar-and-sugar beet pickle of the church-supper type, written for a cook who already knew what she was doing. Two things need filling in: the salt is unmeasured, and the word "canned" stands in for a whole process the recipe does not give.
- What 2 quarts of beets meansMost likely a volume rather than a weight, probably around 3 lb of trimmed raw beets, sliced or quartered after cooking; the recipe does not say. Boil whole with an inch of stem and the root tail on so they do not bleed out, 30-45 minutes depending on size, then slip the skins under cold water.
- The saltNo quantity is given. About 1 to 2 teaspoons suits this volume of brine; add it to the vinegar mixture while it heats so it dissolves, and taste before pouring.
- Vinegar strengthModern cider or distilled vinegar is standardised at 5 percent acidity. Household vinegar was less consistent before standards were enforced, so the 2:1 vinegar-to-water ratio here does not tell you the finished acidity with any precision.
- Pour it hotThe syrup goes over the beets boiling. Hot brine on warm beets draws in faster and the colour sets better; cold brine on cold beets takes days to penetrate.
- As a refrigerator picklePacked into clean jars, cooled, and kept in the refrigerator, these are ready overnight and best after two or three days. Eat within about a month. This is the version to make.
- Do not can it as written"May be used immediately or canned" omits everything that matters — jar preparation, headspace, and a measured boiling-water-bath processing time. Beets are a low-acid vegetable, and whether this diluted brine brings the finished jar reliably below pH 4.6 is not something the recipe establishes. For shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested pickled-beet recipe instead.
- YieldUpwards of 2 quarts finished, so four or five pint jars.
- Seasoning, if you want itThe recipe is deliberately bare. A stick of cinnamon, a few whole cloves or allspice berries simmered in the syrup and strained out is a common addition in beet pickle recipes generally.
Pickled beets belong to the era when a cellar shelf of jars was how a household got vegetables through a winter, and beets — cheap, heavy-yielding, and long-keeping even before pickling — were among the most reliable candidates. Community cookbooks of this kind were typically fundraisers, with each contributor's name running under her recipe, and the instructions are correspondingly compressed: a formula traded between cooks who were assumed to know the process already.