by Wesley Harris
My grandmother’s cooking was pretty standard Southern “soul food”—fried pork chops, fried ham, fried chicken, fried cube steak . . . you get the idea. The fried meat was accompanied by the obvious Deep South vegetables—purple hull peas, butterbeans, turnip or mustard greens, squash, sliced tomatoes, mashed potatoes.
The philosophy was simple—fry meat in grease in a heavy iron skillet and cook vegetables in a pot of water on the stovetop.
Now and then she got a little more sophisticated with a baked squash casserole made with sliced fresh yellow crookneck squash, onions, cornmeal or breadcrumbs, and cheese.
But what I believed was really exotic was a dish we never cooked at home using a vegetable I never saw anywhere else. Grandmother’s Harvard Beets.
I wasn’t sure what a beet was and had to ask Grandmother what was in the tangy sweet-and-sour sauce she served them in.
Not exactly common to our area, beets may be unfamiliar to you. The Harvard version is a classic New England side dish consisting of sliced beets cooked in a tangy sauce made from vinegar, sugar, water, and cornstarch which acts as a thickener.
My family’s Scot-Irish roots by way of Georgia and Alabama had no New England connections at all. That alone made the presence of beets in Grandmother’s kitchen all the more unique.
Harvard Beets became popular in the early 1900s, likely because the cornstarch-based sauce was so different than any other side dish. It is traditionally served hot as an accompaniment to meats like pork chops, chicken, or steak.
Grandmother was born in 1900, so Harvard Beets became popular about the time she took on most of the cooking duties spread between several adjacent houses of family members. She certainly never visited New England to pick up the recipe there.
Several plausible theories account for the dish’s name. One of the most common explanations is that the dish was named for its deep crimson color which resembles the official Harvard University’s athletic teams’ color. Harvard Crimson was officially designated by the university in 1910, around the time the dish was gaining popularity.
Another theory suggests the recipe originated in an English tavern called the “Harwood.” A Russian immigrant who was a customer there allegedly moved to Boston in the 1840s, opened his own restaurant with the same name, and served the dish. Due to an American mispronunciation of “Harwood,” the name morphed into “Harvard.”
So unique was the recipe to this area that we surprised Grandmother by adding it to the Temple Baptist Church cookbook published in 1983.
Harvard Beets, according to Etta Walker (1900-1987):
2 cups hot, cooked beets (canned is fine)
½ cup sugar
½ cup vinegar
2 tbsp butter
½ tbsp cornstarch
Cook cornstarch, vinegar, and sugar together in a saucepan or double boiler, simmering until thick and clear. Add butter and beets and mix well. Serve while hot. This is a good relish with any roasted meat.
Try it this holiday season. Hopefully you won’t find it too exotic.
