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Baked Bean Soup
Take one large can of baked beans (without the tomato sauce), add one and one-half times the quantity of cold water, and three or four slices of bacon. Let them simmer until the beans are soft, then rub through a strainer. Place on the fire and add a little more water, as the soup must not be too thick. Season with a heaping tablespoon of butter, one and one-half teaspoon of salt, a dash of paprika and one-fourth teaspoon of pepper.
A thrifty pantry soup that depends almost entirely on the bacon and the final thinning. Two things decide whether it works: how long the bacon simmers, and how much water goes back in after straining.
- "One large can"The parenthesis points to plain baked beans in pork and molasses sauce rather than the tomato-sauce style. A "large" can of the period held somewhere between about a pint and a quart, so the quantity is approximate. Modern equivalents are sold as "Boston baked beans" or "brick oven beans"; the pork-and-molasses sauce is part of the flavour and can go in with the beans.
- Water quantityOne and a half times the volume of beans: if the can holds about 2 cups, that is roughly 3 cups of water, plus the extra thinning at the end. Expect to add another half to one cup after straining.
- BaconThree or four slices of thick-cut bacon, cut across into lardons, will give more flavour than whole rashers because more surface meets the liquid. Simmer them in the soup rather than frying first if you want the smoke without the fat browning.
- Simmering timeCanned beans are already cooked, so "until the beans are soft" is really "until the bacon has given up its flavour" — 20 to 30 minutes at a bare simmer is enough. Longer only reduces the liquid.
- StrainingAn immersion blender does the work in seconds, but pass the puree through a sieve afterward if you want the smooth texture the original intends; bean skins do not break down. Fish out the bacon before blending and return it chopped, or blend it in for a rougher, meatier soup.
- ConsistencyThe warning that the soup "must not be too thick" matters, because bean puree keeps setting as it cools. Thin it until it just coats the spoon while hot; it will be noticeably thicker in the bowl.
- SeasoningA heaping tablespoon of butter is roughly 20 g. Hold back some of the 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt until the end, since canned beans and bacon are both already salted.
- YieldRoughly 5 cups, serving four as a first course.
Bean soup made from a can of already-baked beans belongs to a particular moment in American cooking: the decades around 1900, when commercially canned Boston-style baked beans became cheap and widely available, and cookbook writers began treating them as a raw ingredient rather than a finished dish. The Butterick Publishing Company was a dress-pattern firm that also published cookbooks, and recipes like this one -- four ingredients, no soaking, no overnight oven -- are the kind of shortcut such books favoured. Rubbing the beans through a strainer is the older way of making a smooth puree: the sieve, not the blender, was the tool that made such soups possible in an ordinary kitchen.