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CHAPTER XI: Parboil
BOSTON BAKED BEANS 1 pint of pea beans 2 tablespoonfuls of molasses 1 teaspoonful of bi-carbonate 1 teaspoonful of mustard of soda 1 teaspoonful of salt 1/4 pound of salt pork Let the beans stand in cold water over night; wash and rinse in several waters. Parboil until a pin will pierce the beans. Change the water during the parboiling, adding the soda with the last water. Rinse thoroughly. Put half the beans in the bean pot. Pour scalding water over the pork, scrape the rind thoroughly, wash in the water, then score the rind in half inch strips (for cutting in slices when cooked). Put the pork on the beans in the pot, and pour in the rest of the beans. Mix the molasses, salt and mustard with hot water to pour and turn over the beans. Then add boiling water to cover. Bake about eight hours in a moderate oven. Keep the beans covered with water and the cover on the pot until the last hour. Then remove the cover, and bring the pork to the top, to brown the rind. Less than a pint of beans can not be baked very successfully.
LIMA BEANS BAKED WITH SALT PORK Parboil one quart of lima beans with half a pound of salt pork. Take out the pork, and score it in slices for serving. Then turn the beans into a baking-dish. Set the pork in the center, and bake until the beans are tender. Do not have the beans too moist when ready for the oven. Cover the dish for a time with an agate plate, then remove the plate to crisp the beans and pork. Use with the pork beans that are rather old and require at least two hours' cooking. Dried beans soaked over night in cold water may be used after an hour of parboiling. Parboil young, tender beans about twenty minutes. Add butter, pepper, and salt, and bake nearly an hour. Do not use pork with young beans, unless it be first cooked by itself two or more hours. COLD BAKED - BEAN SANDWICH, CLUB STYLE Butter two slices of Boston brown bread; on one of these dispose a heart-leaf of lettuce holding a teaspoonful of salad dressing; above the dressing set a generous tablespoonful of cold, baked beans, then another lettuce leaf and dressing; then finish with a second slice of bread, a tablespoonful of beans, a floweret of cauliflower, and a teaspoonful of the dressing over the cauliflower.
VEGETABLES WITH STARCH IN FORM OF CELLULOSE For general directions see beginning of the chapter. BOILED PARSNIPS, BUTTERED Parsnips are much sweeter in the spring than in the fall. To prepare wash and scrape until clean. Set to cook in boiling water and continue the boiling until nearly tender, then add salt and finish cooking. Cut in halves, lengthwise, the parsnips will cook in about half an hour; left whole it will take nearly an hour. Drain carefully, sprinkle with salt and add plenty of butter.
BOILED PARSNIPS, SAUTED Scrub the parsnips with a brush, without scraping or cutting them in halves. Let boil until tender, then drain, cover with cold water and with the hands slip off the skin. Cut into slices three-fourths an inch thick and set to cook in a frying pan containing about three spoonfuls of fat tried out from salt pork. Let cook until browned on one side, then turn, to brown the other side. PARSNIP FRITTERS (Left over parsnips) 1 cup of parsnip puree 1 egg, beaten light 1/4 teaspoonful of salt Salt pork or bacon fat 1/4 teaspoonful of pepper Press the cooked parsnips through a gravy strainer, set into part of a double boiler (into which it fits). Use a wooden pestle; to the puree add the salt, pepper and egg (often the white may be omitted, the yolk being sufficient to hold the pulp together) and mix thoroughly; shape into small flat cakes. Have ready a frying pan containing a little hot fat; cook the cakes until brown on one side, then turn to brown the other side.
BOILED TURNIPS Pare the turnips and cut them in slices from half to a whole inch thick. Set to cook in boiling water without salt. When nearly tender add salt and cook until tender. Serve with butter, or, drain carefully, then mash with a pestle, add salt and butter and stir over the fire until very hot. BOILED TURNIPS, CREAMED Cut the boiled turnips into half inch cubes. For a generous cup of cubes prepare a cup of cream sauce. Pour the sauce over the cubes and let stand over hot water until very hot.
STRONG JUICED VEGETABLES ONIONS Hold the onions under the water from the faucet while peeling. Set to cook in a large saucepan of boiling water. After boiling half an hour, pour off the water and again add a generous quantity of boiling water. Let cook rapidly, uncovered, until tender. Add salt when the water is changed. Season with salt, black pepper and butter. For Creamed Onions, pour over four hot boiled onions about three-fourths a cup of hot cream sauce.
A run of plain vegetable cookery built around parboiling, with Boston baked beans as the anchor. Most of it translates directly; a few instructions reflect stove and pantry conditions that no longer apply.
- The hinge: keep the beans coveredBeans that break the surface of the liquid dry out and toughen, and they cook unevenly from then on. Check every hour or so and top up with boiling water, not cold, which drops the temperature of the pot and can split skins.
- Oven temperatureA "moderate oven" in this period is about 350F, but an eight-hour bake at that heat means constant topping up. 300F holds the pot at a bare simmer and gives the same result with less attention; raise to 400F for the final uncovered hour to brown the pork rind.
- A pint of pea beansPea beans are what a supermarket sells as navy beans — about 2 cups dry, roughly 14 oz, yielding 4 to 6 servings. The note that less than a pint will not bake successfully is sound: a small quantity in a large pot dries and scorches.
- The sodaBicarbonate of soda in the parboil water raises the pH and softens skins quickly. It also destroys thiamine and turns beans mushy if overdone. With current dried beans it can be left out entirely; if you use it, a scant quarter teaspoon is plenty, and the recipe's instruction to rinse thoroughly afterwards should be followed.
- Salt porkBarrel salt pork of this period was generally cured harder than what is sold now, so the scalding and washing may matter less than they did, though modern salt pork is still salty enough that a rinse does no harm. Scraping the rind and scoring it in half-inch strips still gives you neat slices at the table. Slab bacon or a piece of unsmoked pork belly substitutes well.
- The bean potA narrow-necked glazed earthenware bean pot limits evaporation, which is the whole point. A 2-quart Dutch oven with a tight lid works; a wide, shallow dish does not.
- "Fat tried out from salt pork"Simply rendered — dice the pork and cook it slowly until the fat runs. Three spoonfuls is enough to shallow-fry a pan of parsnip slices.
- An agate plateAgate ware is speckled enamelled steel, common kitchen equipment in 1900. Any ovenproof plate or a sheet of foil does the same job of trapping steam for the first part of the lima bean bake.
- Salting lateThe book adds salt only near the end for parsnips and turnips. It does no harm, but salting the water from the start seasons them better and does not toughen them.
- Onions in two watersBoiling half an hour and then changing the water has the effect of muting the sulphur compounds of strongly flavoured storage onions, though the book gives no reason for it. With mild modern cooking onions you lose much of the flavour along with the sharpness; one water and 25 to 35 minutes is enough.
Cooking for Two came out of the Boston Cooking School orbit in the first decade of the twentieth century, and its author, Janet McKenzie Hill, was writing for small urban households at a moment when domestic science was recasting cookery as a matter of measured technique and food chemistry — hence chapter headings organised around a method ("Parboil") and vegetables sorted by whether their starch appears "in form of cellulose." Baked beans belong in a Boston book by right: molasses arrived in New England in bulk through the West Indies trade, and the long, slow, low-attention bake is generally traced to the Saturday-evening meal that could sit in a cooling brick oven through the Sabbath, when no new fire was to be kindled. The recipe's insistence on a proper bean pot, its careful handling of barrel salt pork, and the frank warning that a small batch simply will not work are all marks of a writer adapting a large-household dish to a two-person table without pretending the compromise is free.