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Boston Roast
3 tablespoons salt
I to 2 cups grated cheese
1½ cups dry kidney beans
½ cup milk
2 tablespoons chopped onion
1 cup bread-crums
Soak beans twenty-four hours. Cook until soft in water in which the salt has been dissolved. Drain, chop, add onion, cheese, crums, more salt if needed, and enough milk to moisten. Form into a loaf . Bake in a moderate oven (350° F.) for forty minutes. Baste occasionally with hot water and fat.
A meatless bean-and-cheese loaf of the sort that filled the vegetarian chapters of American cookbooks a century ago. It works, but it needs a firmer hand with the binding and the seasoning than the original text suggests.
- The hinge: drain the beans wellChopped kidney beans hold a great deal of cooking water, and a wet mixture will slump rather than slice. Drain thoroughly, let the beans steam dry a few minutes, then add milk only by the spoonful until the mass just coheres — you may need none at all.
- The three tablespoons of saltThat quantity seasons the bean-cooking water, not the loaf. It is roughly what you would use for a large pot of pasta water; the beans absorb only a fraction. Taste the drained beans before adding "more salt if needed."
- Soaking and cookingTwenty-four hours is longer than necessary for modern dry beans; eight to twelve hours covered in cold water is plenty. Simmer until fully soft, about an hour to an hour and a half depending on the age of the beans. Undercooked kidney beans will not mash and must in any case be boiled properly.
- "Crums"Probably dry breadcrumbs rather than the soft fresh sort, though the recipe does not say. A cup of fine dry crumbs absorbs more moisture than a cup of fresh, which may be why so little milk is called for.
- Grated cheeseThe recipe does not say which; a firm dry cheese such as aged cheddar suits it. The one-to-two-cup range is real latitude: two cups makes a richer, saltier, more cohesive loaf, one cup lets the beans speak.
- The oven and the basting350°F as stated. The basting with hot water and fat is doing the work a fat-laced meat loaf does for itself; brush with melted butter or oil every ten to fifteen minutes, or simply cover for the first half hour and uncover to brown.
- Yield and servingEnough for four to six as a main course. It slices best after resting ten minutes out of the oven, and a tomato sauce or brown gravy, which the loaf rather needs, is the obvious accompaniment.
"Boston roast" is a name that turns up across early twentieth-century vegetarian and economy cookery, often said to be borrowed from the city's long association with the baked bean — the loaf is, on that account, essentially Boston beans given the shape and the carving ceremony of a Sunday joint, though the derivation is traditional rather than documented. Cookbooks of this period leaned hard on the combination of legume and cheese, following the then-current nutritional thinking that a meatless meal had to supply protein in visible, measurable quantity; the cheese is there as much for the food chemistry as for the flavour.