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Baked Beans
Soak one quart of white beans over night.
In the morning let them come to a boil. Drain and place in the pail of the cooker with one-half pound of salt pork. Gash the rind of the pork several times and cover the whole with boiling water. Boil for ten minutes and then without removing the cover place in the fireless cooker for about five hours. Remove the beans to a baking-dish, put a well shaped piece of the pork in the center and season with salt, pepper, three tablespoons of molasses. Place in oven until pork is thoroughly cooked and beans tender. Serve either hot or cold.
A fireless cooker was an insulated box that finished the cooking on stored heat alone; the beans go in at a hard boil and coast down over five hours. A slow cooker on low, or a covered pot in a 200-225F oven, does the same work more predictably.
- The hinge: salt and molasses go in lastThe added salt and the molasses are held back from the long cooking, and that appears deliberate; the salt pork itself, however, goes into the pail with the beans from the start. Salt and acidic sweeteners are traditionally said to firm bean skins, so the long cooking is done in plain water and the seasoning added only for the final oven stage.
- A quart of beansMeasured dry, a quart of navy or other small white beans is about 1 3/4 to 2 lb, and it will swell to something over double that volume once soaked. Use a pot with real headroom for the initial boil.
- Fireless cooker substituteBring the drained beans and pork to a full rolling boil in boiling water, then transfer to a slow cooker set on low, or a heavy covered pot in a 200-225F oven, for about five hours. The point is a long hold just under the simmer, not a bubbling boil.
- The temperature questionAn insulated box loses heat steadily, and a five-hour descent with a piece of pork in the pail is not a temperature curve anyone would choose now. A slow cooker or low oven holds a far steadier temperature, which is why the modern equivalent is the easier route.
- Salt porkBuy salt pork with the rind still on, in one piece, so it can be gashed and set in the center as the recipe intends. Modern salt pork is often very salty; a quick rinse, or a five-minute blanch in fresh water before it joins the beans, keeps the finished pot from coming out too salty.
- The oven stageNo temperature is given. Bake uncovered at 300-325F for 45 minutes to an hour, until the top has browned and crusted and the pork is soft enough to slice. Add a little of the reserved bean liquid if the surface dries before the color develops.
- MolassesThree tablespoons is restrained by Boston standards, which is what makes these beans savory rather than sweet. Use unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap, which turns bitter over a long bake.
- YieldAbout eight generous servings as a main dish. The instruction to serve them cold is not an afterthought; cold baked beans with brown bread were standard Sunday and picnic fare.
The fireless cooker had a brief vogue in American kitchens in the first decades of the twentieth century: a wooden or metal box packed with hay, asbestos, or mineral wool, with soapstone discs or a fitted pail, meant to finish a dish on heat already paid for. Household economists praised it for saving fuel and for freeing a woman from watching the stove on a hot day. Baked beans were the natural showpiece, since New England had already spent two centuries proving that beans want long, slow, gentle heat and very little attention -- the traditional Saturday bean pot went into the banked brick oven overnight so that Sunday dinner required no cooking at all. The fireless cooker was in effect a portable version of that banked oven, and it lost its place once gas and electric ranges with reliable low settings, and later the slow cooker, made the same trick easier.