Skip to main content
Main

Canned Beets

A preserved beet dish with a sweet vinegar dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Canned Beets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beets

  1. Cook small young beets until tender, then remove the skin.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, combine equal parts vinegar and water, adding ½ cup sugar for each cup of vinegar.

  2. Reheat the beets in the vinegar mixture and can them.

Serve

  1. To serve, thicken the dressing with a little flour, then add a bit of butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Heat the mixture and serve the beets in it.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Small young beets
Provide the main vegetable, with tender flesh that softens further during cooking.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the beets and gives the dressing its tang.
Flour
Thickens the dressing so it coats the beets instead of running off.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the thickened dressing.

The step that matters

Thickening the dressing with flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid to swell and thicken it. Added raw or unevenly mixed, it forms lumps and leaves a floury taste, so whisk it in gradually while heating.

“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