Home › Meat Substitutes › Baked Beans No. 2
Baked Beans No. 2
1 pint white beans 1 tablespoon malt honey or molasses 2 tablespoons brown sugar 3 pints boiling water 2 teaspoons salt 1/4 cup butter Soak the beans over night in cold water; then cook in cold water, and parboil for ten minutes. Drain off this liquid, and add three pints of boiling water. Cook about two hours or until the beans begin to break open. Then add the seasoning, and turn into a covered bean pot or baking dish, and bake in a slow oven four or five hours; add water if necessary during the baking process. Remove cover a half-hour before finished baking to allow beans to brown.
A straightforward meatless bean pot from the era when baked beans without salt pork counted as a substantial main dish. The long bake is the point, not a formality.
- Slow ovenIn period usage roughly 250-300F. At that temperature four to five hours is realistic; the beans should be sitting in thick syrupy liquid, not swimming.
- A pint of beansMeasured dry, that is about 2 cups, roughly 14 oz. The recipe specifies only "white beans"; navy or Great Northern suit it well. Yields about six to eight servings.
- Malt honeyA malt extract syrup sold as a sweetener in early vegetarian households, largely gone from grocery shelves. Molasses, the recipe's own alternative, is the practical choice; barley malt syrup is the closest match if you want the original flavor.
- Parboil then drainThe ten-minute boil-and-drain removes some of the oligosaccharides that cause gas and gets rid of the murky soaking-water color. Keep it; it is not wasted work.
- Salt timingNote that the salt goes in only after the beans have simmered two hours and begun to split. The traditional belief that salting early toughens skins is disputed by modern testing; the recipe itself offers no reason for the order.
- Watch the waterThe instruction to add water during baking is the one that matters. Check every hour and top up with boiling water so the beans stay just barely covered; once the top layer dries out it stays leathery no matter how long you bake.
- BrowningUncovering for the last half hour gives the glazed crust. If the surface is pale, a few minutes under the broiler finishes it.
- FatA quarter cup of butter stands in for the salt pork. It carries flavor and keeps the surface from drying; oil works, but the result tastes noticeably leaner.
Baked beans are the New England dish par excellence, traditionally built on salt pork and molasses and, by an often-repeated tradition, baked overnight in the residual heat of a Saturday oven so the household could eat without cooking on the Sabbath. Removing the pork was one task for vegetarian cookery writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose books "Meatless Cookery" belongs to in spirit. Beans were the natural centerpiece of a "meat substitutes" chapter: cheap, keeping well dry, and high enough in protein to answer the standing objection that a meatless table left laborers underfed. Malt honey and similar malt extracts turn up repeatedly in these books, sold through sanitarium food companies as wholesome alternatives to refined sugar.