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Spiced Beet Relish

A sweet and spicy relish made with beets, vinegar, sugar, mace, cinnamon, mustard seeds, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Spiced Beet Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the relish

  1. Combine vinegar, sugar, mace, cinnamon stick, mustard seeds, and cloves in a granite saucepan.

  2. Boil until the vinegar is reduced by half.

  3. Add sliced or diced beets and cook slowly over low heat for 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold, or store in mason jars for later use.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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, earthy sweetness and the deep red colour of the relish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the relish.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Mustard seeds
Add a pungent, slightly bitter note that deepens the spiced flavour.

The step that matters

Reducing the vinegar by half. Boiling concentrates the vinegar and sugar, so the liquid becomes more acidic and syrupy. Reducing it fully before adding the beets gives the relish a balanced sharpness and a stable base, while too little reduction leaves it thin and sour.

Swap the mace

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

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

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