Beetroot, Pickled
INGREDIENTS. Sufficient vinegar to cover the beets, 2 oz. of whole pepper, 2 oz. of allspice to each gallon of vinegar. AVERAGE COST, 2d. each.
Wash the beets free from dirt, and be very careful not to prick the outside skin, or they would lose their beautiful colour, Put them into boiling water, let them simmer gently, and when about threeparts done, which will be in 1½ hour, take them out and let them cool. Boil the vinegar with pepper and allspice, in the above proportion, for 10 minutes, and when cold, pour it on the beets, which must be peeled ed and cut into slices about 1/2 inch thick. Cover with bladder to exclude the air, and in a week they will be fit for use.
TIME. One week.
BEVERAGES.
Beignets Soufflés. - INGREDIENTS for small dish. pint of water, 3 eggs, 1 dessertspoonful of white sugar, 3 oz. of butter, flavouring of vanilla, fat for frying.
AVERAGE COST, 8d.
Boil the butter in the water and stir in enough flour to make the mixture stiff enough to leave the sides of the saucepan; then add the yolks of the eggs, and beat the mixture well. When cold, add the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth with the sugar, and flavouring, and fry in spoonfuls in very hot fat. Serve immediately.
Grated cheese can be substituted for the flavouring of vanilla, when a little cayenne must take the place of the sugar.
TIME.-5 minutes to fry.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Benton Sauce (to serve with Hot or Cold Roast Beef.) - INGREDIENTS for 1 tureen.-1 tablespoonful of scraped horseradish, 1 teaspoonful of made mustard, 1 teaspoonful of pounded sugar, 4 tablespoonfuls of vinegar. AVERAGE COST, 2d. Grate or scrape the horseradish very fine, and mix it with the other ingredients, which must be all well blended together; serve in a tureen. With cold meat this sauce is a very good substitute for pickles.
A straightforward vinegar pickle in the Victorian manner: the beets are part-boiled, cooled, sliced and covered with spiced vinegar. The whole success of it rests on not breaking the skin before the beets are cooked.
- Keep the skins intactWash gently, leave an inch of stalk and the root tail on, and do not trim or peel until after boiling. Any cut lets the pigment bleed into the water and the slices come out pale and washed-out.
- Cooking timeAn hour to reach "three-parts done" suits large winter beetroot. Small or medium beets of the kind usually sold now are three-quarters cooked in 20 to 30 minutes; test with a skewer, which should meet firm resistance at the centre.
- The spice proportion2 oz each of whole pepper and allspice per gallon of vinegar works out to roughly a rounded teaspoon of each per cup. Scale to the amount of vinegar you actually need to cover the jar, not to a gallon.
- VinegarUse a plain malt, cider or white wine vinegar of at least 5 per cent acidity. Cheap low-acid "pickling" vinegars and diluted supermarket own-brands will not preserve reliably.
- Cool the vinegar firstThe recipe is specific that the vinegar goes on cold, though it does not say why; pouring it on hot would be likely to soften the slices. Boil ten minutes, strain if you dislike whole spice in the jar, and let it come to room temperature.
- "Cover with bladder"A pig's bladder tied over the crock mouth was the standard Victorian airtight seal. A clean glass jar with a vinegar-proof plastic-lined lid does the same job; avoid bare metal lids, which corrode.
- This is not a canned pickleNothing here is processed for shelf storage. Keep the jar in the refrigerator and eat within a month or so, as with any fresh-pack pickle.
- Yield and useAbout 1 lb of beetroot fills a 1-pint jar; add enough spiced vinegar to cover the slices, as the recipe directs. The recipe gives a week's standing before use. Serve with cold beef, ham or cheese.
Pickled beetroot earned its place in Victorian cookery books less as a delicacy than as a colour: a dish of cold meat, a bare salad or a supper table wanted something crimson on it, and beetroot was cheap, was often said to keep through the winter in a clamp of sand, and took vinegar well. Mrs Beeton's costing of twopence each puts it firmly among the everyday economies. The spicing with whole black pepper and allspice belongs to the standard English pickling mixtures of the period, and the direction to seal the crock with a bladder is a reminder that this was written before the cheap screw-top jar; a scraped, softened pig's bladder tied over the rim and left to dry taut is generally taken to have been a common airtight cover in a nineteenth-century larder.