email this pageA couple of times a year, I take my bean pot from the top of the cabinet,give it a good scrub and make baked beans. The recipe I use is similar tothe one in Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking School Cook Book (1896) and every other classic New England cookbook. It’s ridiculously simple—only six ingredients including the beans, and I wouldn’t think of tampering with it. I’d always assumed the recipe was similar to the one supposedly baked by the Penobscot and Iroquois Indians and shared with the Pilgrims, so you can imagine how surprised I was when I read that Native Americans baked beans with maple syrup and bear fat.
In what might have been the country’s first bit of culinary tinkering,the Massachusetts Colonists made a few changes to the recipe, using molasses instead of maple syrup and salt pork instead of bear. Masters in the art of leftovers, they baked beans on Saturday, often in the oven at a local tavern where everyone else baked their beans, and ate them for supper. On Sunday, when cooking was not permitted for religious reasons, they ate beans with brown bread and crab cakes. And my guess is that if there were any left at the end of the day, they polished them off before they went to bed.
Boston Baked Beans
Ingredients
2 medium onions, vertically sliced
1/2 cup molasses
1 tablespoon brown sugar
4 teaspoons brown mustard
1/2 pound salt pork or country ham
1 teaspoon salt
Black pepper to taste
2. The next day drain and rinse beans. Place in a large pot and cover with 2 quarts cold water. Cover and bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 30 to 45 minutes or until shells crack. Drain, reserving cooking water.
3. Preheat oven to 250F. Place onions in bottom of a 2 ½ -quart bean pot or casserole dish and add beans. In a large bowl, combine molasses, sugar, mustard and about 1 ½ cups cooking water and pour over beans. Add more cooking water if needed to cover beans. Place salt pork on top and tuck in slightly. Cover and bake 7 to 8 hours. Check occasionally and add more of the reserved bean cooking water as necessary to keep beans covered. Serves 8.
By Jean Kressy, "Relish the American Table," February 12, 2006
Related Stories
If you enjoyed reading this story, Boston Baked Beans, then you might enjoy these other stories.- Beans 101
- More Maple Syrup Recipes
- Bean Counter
- Making the (Maple) Grade
- French Tart, American Make-Over
Share This Story With Others:
There are no current discussions for this article. Why not be the first?
