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Boston Baked Beans
Soak one pint of beans over night. Early in the morning set on stove and let them nearly boil; remove and let cold water run on them until cool, put in bean pot with three-quarters of a pound salt pork, one heaping teaspoon mustard, two of sugar, one scant spoon salt; fill pot with cold water and set in oven with cover on; as water cooks out add more, and cook all day; remove cover last hour. Should cook in moderate oven and show a little moisture when done.
— Mrs. L. B. Banker
A long, low bake with almost no active work; the only real skills are keeping the pot wet and being patient. A few of the instructions need translating.
- Oven temperature"Moderate" in a wood- or coal-range book of this vintage is usually taken as somewhere around 325-350F; for an all-day bake the lower end is the safer reading. The receipt asks for a full day's cooking rather than a fixed span, and a gentler heat spares the beans' skins.
- A pint of beansA dry pint of beans weighs about 14 oz, roughly 2 cups — enough for perhaps 6 servings. Small white beans (navy or pea beans) are what Boston pots were built around; they hold shape over a long bake where larger beans collapse.
- The parboil and the cold rinseBringing the soaked beans nearly to a boil and then cooling them under running water stops the cooking dead. The usual explanation for the step is that it helps the beans hold together through the hours in the oven; it is not mere fussiness.
- Salt porkThree-quarters of a pound is a generous amount of fat and salt for a pint of beans, which is why the added salt is only "one scant spoon." Score the rind in a crosshatch and bury the piece in the beans, leaving the rind just at the surface so it browns in the final hour. Modern salt pork varies in saltiness; taste before adding any salt at all.
- "Two of sugar"Most likely two teaspoons, carrying over the measure before it, though the receipt does not repeat "heaping." Many Boston recipes of the same period use molasses instead or in addition; molasses in place of the sugar is in keeping with the period and gives the darker colour most people expect.
- Keeping it wetThis is the hinge. Beans that dry out in the oven stop softening and turn mealy; check every hour or so and top up with boiling water, not cold, so the pot never drops off temperature. The water should stay just level with the beans.
- The last hourUncovering at the end evaporates the surface liquid, browns the pork rind and sets the top crust. The finished pot should look glossy and barely moist rather than soupy, exactly as the receipt says.
- Acid and salt timingIf you add tomato, vinegar or extra molasses early, the beans will take considerably longer to soften. Anything acidic is better stirred in during the last hour or two.
Baked beans reached New England cookbooks by way of the bean pot — a narrow-necked, bulbous earthenware vessel designed to sit in the falling heat of a brick oven or the back of a range overnight, which is why the method survives as an all-day bake long after brick ovens went out of use. The Saturday-night bean pot is often tied to Sabbath observance, which traditionally began at sundown on Saturday, so that the beans cooked through Saturday itself. That a village fundraising book files "Boston Baked Beans" among its local receipts says something about how completely the dish had become regional shorthand: the name seems to have travelled without the city, and contributors like Mrs. Banker were recording a household staple, not an exotic import. The choice of sugar over molasses marks a slightly lighter, plainer pot than the Boston version most often described.