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Bean Polenta
1 pint of small, white soup beans, 1 tablespoonful of butter, I 1/2 tablespoonfuls of molasses, ½ teaspoonful of French mustard, 1 tablespoonful of vinegar, Salt and pepper to taste.
Wash the beans and soak them over night in lukewarm water. In the morning, drain off this water, cover with fresh, cold water, bring slowly to a boil, and boil slowly one hour; drain again, cover with one quart of fresh, boiling water, and boil slowly another hour. When done, press through a colander, return to the kettle, add the butter, molasses, mustard, salt, pepper and vinegar; stir and boil ten minutes. Serve in a vegetable tureen.
A thick bean purée seasoned in the Boston baked bean idiom — molasses, mustard, vinegar — and named polenta for its texture rather than its ingredients. Nothing here is difficult, but the seasoning goes in only at the end, after the beans are soft, and that order matters.
- Hold the salt and acid until the endHold the acid and sweetener until the end -- The recipe adds vinegar and molasses only after the beans are cooked and puréed. Acid and sugar both slow the softening of bean skins, and beans boiled in vinegar can stay stubbornly firm for hours. (Salt is a different case: it is often said to toughen beans, but salted water is now generally reckoned to help the skins soften.)
- A pint of beansMeasured dry, that is 2 cups, roughly 14 oz, which cooks up to about 6 cups. "Small, white soup beans" means navy or pea beans; cannellini are larger and cook softer but will do.
- The mustard quantity is garbledThe mustard -- The original calls for 1½ teaspoonfuls, matching the 'I 1/2 tablespoonfuls' of molasses above; the singular 'teaspoonful' is only period style. 'French mustard' at this date generally meant a smooth prepared mustard of the Dijon type rather than dry English powder. Start at the lower end and adjust at the finish.
- Cooking timeTwo hours in two stages suited beans of unknown age. Modern dried navy beans, soaked overnight, are usually tender in 60 to 90 minutes total. Cook until they crush easily against the side of the pot rather than by the clock.
- Both drainingsDiscarding the soaking water and then the first hour's cooking water removes much of the oligosaccharides that cause gas, at some cost in flavour. If you would rather keep the flavour, cook straight through in the second quart of water.
- Pressing through a colanderA food mill or potato ricer does this in a fraction of the time and leaves the skins behind. A stick blender gives a smoother, gluier result; a plain masher gives a coarser one, which suits the dish better.
- The final ten minutesA bean purée on direct heat catches and spits. Use the lowest flame, a heavy pot, and stir more or less constantly. This step is what thickens it enough to mound on a spoon.
- Yield and servingServes four to six as a side. It stiffens noticeably as it cools, so serve it hot in a covered dish; leftovers reheat with a splash of water, or can be spread, chilled and fried in slices like true polenta.
American cookbooks of the period could use polenta loosely, for stiff savoury purées served hot from a spoon or cooled and sliced, rather than strictly for the Northern Italian cornmeal mush the word properly names — the borrowed title told a reader what texture to expect. The seasoning, though, points to New England: molasses is the constant in Boston baked beans, with mustard and vinegar common alongside it, here applied to a smooth purée instead of a slow-baked pot. Small white "soup beans" — navy or pea beans, the cheapest legume in the market and a staple of naval and institutional provisioning, which is generally where the name navy bean is traced — were the standard cheap protein of the period, and books on vegetable cookery leaned on them heavily in an era when a meatless dish still had to satisfy at the centre of the table. Serving it in a covered vegetable tureen was simply standard service.