Home › Meat Substitutes › Baked Beans (Teaspoon salt Dash of pepper)
Baked Beans (Teaspoon salt Dash of pepper)
1 pint dried beans. 1/4 pound salt pork. 1 cup water. 1/2 teaspoon salt Dash of pepper 1 tablespoon molasses Soak the beans over night, adding a little soda to the water. In the morning cook them gently until the skins begin to break; then drain off the water, saving one cup. Empty the beans into a baking dish; bury the pork in them, rind side up, and pour over them the cup of water saved, into which has been stirred the salt, pepper and molasses. If desired, a little mustard or onion or more molasses may be added. Cover the beans and let them bake in a slow oven for four or five hours. Serve with Boston brown bread.
The loose-leaf format has cost this page its opening lines: the quantities of beans and salt pork are missing, and only the seasonings survive. The method is complete, and it is the standard New England one.
- The missing quantitiesJudged against the seasoning given — half a teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon of molasses — this is a pot of about 1 lb (2 cups) dried navy or pea beans with roughly 1/4 to 1/2 lb salt pork. Treat that as a reconstruction, not the original text.
- Slow ovenIn period usage roughly 250 to 300F. Five hours at that temperature is not excessive; the long, low bake is what turns the beans creamy and drives the molasses into them rather than merely coating them.
- The soda in the soaking waterA pinch of baking soda was commonly recommended in hard-water districts to soften skins. It also turns beans slack and slightly soapy if overdone, and it destroys thiamine. Around a quarter teaspoon per quart is the figure usually given as an outer limit; with modern beans and soft water it can be left out entirely.
- One cup of cooking liquid is not enough for five hoursOne cup of cooking liquid is not much for five hours -- The pot must stay covered, and it will still need checking every hour or so. Add boiling water when the level drops below the surface of the beans.
- Salt pork, rind side upBuy fat salt pork, not bacon — the cure is plainer and there is no smoke. Score the rind in a criss-cross before burying it and leave the scored side just proud of the beans so it browns and crisps.
- Uncover at the endThe recipe does not say so, but the last 30 to 45 minutes with the lid off is what gives the dark glazed top. Without it the dish is correct but pale.
- Skins begin to breakThat first stovetop cook is a parboil, not a full cook — usually 30 to 45 minutes on soaked beans. Blow on a spoonful; when the skins curl back, drain.
- YieldOn the reconstructed quantities above, about six servings as a main dish with brown bread, more as a side. The original gives no quantities.
Placing baked beans under "Meat Substitutes" tells you what the section meant in the period: not vegetarian cookery but economy, and a way of getting protein onto the table with a little salt pork instead of a roast. The dish itself is the New England Saturday-night pot, generally traced to the Puritan practice of setting beans in the cooling brick oven on Saturday so that no cooking need be done on the Sabbath; by Sunday morning they had had their long slow bake and were eaten cold or reheated. Boston brown bread — a steamed rye-and-cornmeal loaf, also molasses-sweetened — is named as the accompaniment. Molasses rather than sugar reflects the older colonial trade with the West Indies, and it survived in these recipes long after refined sugar was cheap.