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Pickles, Beet

Pickled red beets preserved in a vinegar and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickles, Beet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beets

  1. Boil the small red beets until tender, then skin them.

  2. Slice the beets.

  3. Place the beets in Mason jars, leaving a two-inch space at the top.

Make the syrup and pack the jars

  1. Prepare a boiling syrup with 1 pint of cider vinegar and 3 pounds of light brown sugar, adding a few whole cloves and sticks of cinnamon.

  2. Fill the jars with the boiling syrup.

  3. Let the jars stand for fifteen minutes to heat the beets.

  4. Pour the syrup off, heat it quickly, and return it to the beets in the jars.

  5. Seal the jars as usual.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cider + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,683 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Small red beets
Provide the main body, texture and color of the pickles once cooked until tender.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickles their sharp, tangy flavor and helps preserve them.
Light brown sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Returning the reheated syrup to the beets. The syrup must be hot when it goes back into the jars. Hot liquid helps drive air out and seal the jars, and the beets need to be fully covered to keep them from spoiling.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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