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To Pickle Beet Roots

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,152 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

To Pickle Beet Roots

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the red beet roots until tender.

  2. Remove the skins and slice the beets.

  3. Shape the slices as desired and place them in a jar.

  4. Boil enough vinegar to cover the beets with a little mace, sliced ginger, and sliced horseradish.

  5. Pour the hot vinegar over the beets and seal the jar.

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. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Ginger + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together676 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Mace + horseradishtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

Swap the mace

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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