oldbear

"Dick Monahan" <dick@dickmonahan.com> writes:

The origin of the name "Harvard beets" is obscure, but it appears
to be a 20th century appellation for an older common method of
preparing beets. Harvard beets do not show up in the 1896 edition
of the Fannie Farmer cookbook, but are included in later editions
beginning in the early 1900s.

The May 2006 issue of Harvard's alumni magazine offers this unsupported
explanation of the name:

" 'Harvard' is a common Mid-western and Great Plains adjective


boiled beets with an addition of sugar and vinegar and a bit
of cornstarch to thicken the juice (not pickled, but served
hot from the pan) are ‘Harvard Beets.’ Ask your Uncle Henry
(who knew a thing or two) why, and he would say, they’ve
been 'educated,' pronounced distinctly with equal stress on
all syllables: 'ed-you-ca-ted.' I once remarked to a store
clerk in Cody, Wyoming, that a certain sophisticated trout fly
looked like a more common pattern that had been to Harvard.
Respondent understood without further explanation."

http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/050622.html

The New York Times provides an alternate explanation:

Q. Harvard beets are beets that have been cooked and are served
in a sweet-sour sauce. Some people make them with sugar and
water thickened with cornstarch to which vinegar is added. Is
this recipe authentic? Some cookbooks say that the original
never contained water but only vinegar. What is the origin of
the name?

A. I am inclined, as most cookbook authors seem to be, to agree
that Harvard beets are served in a sweet and sour sauce and,
like most sweet and sour sauces, the sauce is made from vinegar
and sugar. No water. There are several additions that are on
occasion added to the basic sauce, including a little orange
marmalade. I have browsed through many encyclopedias and can
find nothing as to the origin of the name. One can only surmise
that they may have originated in some kitchen on the Harvard
University campus.
-- The New York Times
May 27, 1981

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag... 6C0A967948260

There are several other theories about the name. Here is a summary of
some of the more common explanations:

There are two versions of how this dish got its name. The one
I had heard is that the crimson color of the beets is also the
official school color of Harvard University, hence the name.
The other version has to do with an English pub named Harwood's,
where this recipe supposedly originated. According to the story,
a Russian immigrant opened a restaurant in Boston under the same
name and began serving their signature beets. Due to his flawed
English, the dish sounded more like "Harvard beets" than
"Harwood's beets," and the name stuck. No matter how you
pronounce it, Harvard beets are a 20th century American classic.

http://www.worldwiderecipes.com/american_classics.htm

Although the reference to the 1896 edition of Fannie Farmer is wrong,
this explanation also plays upon the concept that "Harvard" was (and
is?) associated with "erudite, sophisticated, refined":

New England generally followed the English tradition of taming
beets in a sweet-sour sauce thickened by flour or cornstarch.
In 1896 Fannie Farmer tried to upgrade the dish by giving it
an Ivy League name, "Harvard Beets." Yalies, not to be outdone,
substituted flour and butter for cornstarch, and orange juice
for vinegar, to produce "Yale Beets."

http://www.sallys-place.com/food/col...sell/beets.htm

By the way, worth noting as a resource is the fabulous collection of
over 7000 cookbooks mainatined by the Michigan State University Library.
The library even has scanned a number of these volumes:

Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project
Michigan State University

The 76 cookbooks selected for Feeding America: The Historic
American Cookbook Project are from MSU's Cookery Collection,
which totals more than 7,000 cookbooks and spans seven
centuries. The collection, housed in Special Collections -
a division of the MSU Library, features cookbooks written in
many different languages from throughout the world.

http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/...oks/index.html

This MSU web site provides a robust searchable database and the ability
to view actual cookbooks either as scanned pages images or in HTML
text format.

Unfortunately, among the few dozen scanned volumes, there are
recipes for "Harvard pudding" and "Harvard salad" (both from Fannie
Merritt Farmer), but not for "Harvard Beets."

It would be a good bet that one could find, within the full collection,
the earliest mention of Havard beets and their precursors. I will
leave this academic research project for some historian, archivist,
researcher or hapless grad student in need of a thesis topic.

Cheers,
The Old Bear