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Pickled Beets

Pickled beets are beets preserved in vinegar with onion, horseradish, cloves, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Beets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the beets for at least 2 hours until tender.

  2. Slice the cooked beets and place them in a jar.

  3. Add a slice of raw onion for each beet.

  4. Add horseradish, cloves, and peppercorns to the jar.

Pickle

  1. Pour boiling vinegar over the beets and let them cool.

  2. Once cooled, cover 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. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 and texture, becoming tender through long boiling before pickling.
Boiling vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the beets and gives them their sharp, tangy flavour.
Raw onion
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavour that mellows somewhat as it sits in the brine.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that complements the sweetness of the beets.

The step that matters

Boil the beets until tender. Beets must be cooked through before pickling, because the vinegar brine does not soften them. Boiling for at least two hours breaks down the fibrous texture so the slices are tender to eat.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, horseradish, 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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