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Sweet Pickle of Beets

A sweet pickle made by boiling beets, removing skins, slicing, and soaking them in a vinegar and spice syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sweet Pickle of Beets

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beets

  1. Wash the beets carefully without breaking the skin or trimming the roots or stalks.

  2. Boil the beets in enough water to cover them until tender.

  3. Rub off the skins with a wet towel and slice the beets.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, cloves, peppercorns, mace, cinnamon, and brown sugar. Stir until the sugar melts and the mixture is scalding hot.

Pickle and cool

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the sliced beets and let them cool.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Beets
Provide the main body, texture and earthy flavor of the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the beets and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Whole cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.
Whole peppercorns
Add a mild, pungent spiciness to the pickling liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Rub off the skins gently after boiling. Beets lose color and bleed juice when the skin is broken, so keeping the skin intact during washing and boiling protects both color and texture. Once cooked, the skins slip off easily with a damp towel.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, cinnamon, sugar. 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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