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Boston Bean Sandwich
I POUND CAN BAKED BEANS 1/4 CUP CHILI SAUCE BOSTON BROWN BREAD 8 SLICES CRISP BACON Drain beans and mash them; mix with chili sauce, and spread on buttered slices of Boston brown bread. Chop hot, crisply fried bacon, and sprinkle over.
An open-faced sandwich built from three pantry items, meant for a camp table or a packed lunch. The only real decisions are what kind of chili sauce you use and how you handle the brown bread.
- Chili sauceThis means the thick, sweet-tart bottled tomato condiment of the Heinz type, closer to ketchup with onion and pepper than to any hot sauce. A modern chili-garlic paste or sriracha will overwhelm the beans.
- Boston brown breadA steamed, molasses-sweetened loaf of rye, cornmeal and wheat, sold in cans and cut into rounds. Cans are still made; if you cannot find one, a dense dark pumpernickel is the nearest substitute, though it lacks the sweetness that balances the chili sauce.
- Slicing the breadCanned brown bread is moist and tears under a straight-edged knife. Push the loaf out whole and cut it with a serrated blade in a sawing motion, or run a length of thread around and through it.
- The pound can of beansA 16 oz can of baked beans, drained, gives roughly a cup or so of solids. Drain well and press out the sauce, or the spread will slide off the bread.
- Bacon timingThe bacon goes on hot and crisp, immediately before eating. Chopped bacon sitting on a wet bean spread turns soft within a few minutes, which is the whole difference between this and a cold bean sandwich.
- Warming the breadBrown bread rounds take well to a minute per side in the bacon fat or on a griddle. The original does not call for it, but it firms the surface against the beans.
- YieldThe recipe specifies eight slices of bacon but leaves the number of bread rounds open; a can of beans will likely spread over six to eight rounds, a light meal for a few people.
Baked beans and steamed brown bread are the two halves of the New England Saturday-night supper, a pairing generally traced to Puritan household practice, when the meal was cooked ahead so no work fell on the Sabbath. Both survived into the twentieth century as canned goods, and the canned versions are what this recipe assumes: beans and bread that need no oven, which is exactly why the combination migrated into camp and outdoor cookery. The chili sauce is the modern note, a bottled factory condiment that appeared in the later nineteenth century. The result is less a New England dish than a pantry assembly that borrows New England's most portable flavors.