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Pickled Beets

Pickled beets are sliced beets preserved in cider vinegar with cloves, onions, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Pickled Beets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickling liquid

  1. Heat the cloves in cider vinegar over medium heat for 30 minutes without boiling, then let cool.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the boiled and skinned beets and let them cool.

  2. Thinly slice the small white onions.

Pack and pickle

  1. In a glass or stone jar, layer beets, onion slices, a spoonful of the vinegar and cloves, and a pinch of salt.

  2. Repeat the layering until the jar is almost full, then fill with cold cider vinegar.

  3. Let the pickles sit for 24 hours before using.

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

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

  2. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Clove + cidertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,683 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the beets and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Small dark red beets
Supply the main body, earthy sweetness and deep red colour of the pickle.
Small white onions
Add sharp, pungent flavour that mellows as the onions soak in the vinegar.
Cloves
Infuse the vinegar with warm, aromatic spice.

The step that matters

Keep the vinegar from boiling when infusing the cloves. Boiling would drive off volatile aromatic compounds from the cloves and make the vinegar harsher, so gentle heat is used to extract flavour without losing it.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cider, vinegar. 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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