Skip to main content
Main

To Can Beets

A method for preserving beets in sterilized jars with a sugar‑salt‑vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Can Beets

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and peel

  1. Wash the beets, leaving the leaves intact.

  2. Boil the beets for 1½ hours or until tender.

  3. Pour off the boiling water and cool the beets in cold water.

  4. Slip the skins off the beets and cut out any bad spots.

Pack and seal

  1. Place the beets in sterilized glass jars.

  2. Boil the water, sugar, salt, and vinegar together.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the beets in the jars and seal.

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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beets
The main vegetable; boiling softens it so it can soak up the pickling liquid.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickling liquid its tang and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot liquid and sealing the jars. Pour the hot pickling liquid over the beets and seal the jars while both are still hot. The hot liquid and sterilized jars help drive out air and form a seal as the jars cool, so the contents stay sealed.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes