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Baked Pickled Pork and Beans
Place in a saucepan of water one quart of white beans, which have been previously soaked for twelve hours in water, and boil them gently until they are done and can be easily pierced with a pin; great care should be used not to boil them too fast, as they will break open; a small chopped onion may be boiled with them if desired. Turn them out into a colander, and pour cold water over to cool them. Put three quarters of a pound of salted pork, after cutting it into strips, three or four in number, into a deep baking dish, and pour in enough boiling water to cover. Bury the pieces of pork in the beans, then put one teaspoonful of salt into a basin, and stir in a teaspoonful of mustard mixed with half a teacupful of molasses; pour in enough more of the boiling water to make the entire quantity half a pint, and pour this mixture over the beans and pork, adding enough more of the boiling water to make them well moistened. Place the dish in a moderate oven and bake for an hour; then turn the beans out onto a dish, and serve with the pieces of pork in the center. A teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda should be added to the saucepan in which the beans are being boiled, as it will destroy the acid taste of the skins.
A pre-boil-then-bake method for salt pork and beans, shorter and looser than the all-day Boston version. A few of its measures and one of its habits need translating.
- A quart of dry beansMeasured dry, that is roughly 1 3/4 to 2 lb of navy or other small white beans, which will swell to something near two quarts soaked. Enough for eight to ten as a side, or about six as a main dish.
- Salted porkSalt pork from the belly or fatback, sold in slabs near the bacon. It is cured but not smoked; bacon substitutes acceptably but brings smoke the original did not have. Rinse it before cutting into strips.
- Half a teacupful of molassesA period teacup is usually reckoned at about six fluid ounces, though the measure varied; half is roughly three fluid ounces, or six tablespoons. Use unsulphured molasses rather than blackstrap, which can taste bitter.
- Hold the added saltThe teaspoonful of salt assumes pork of unknown saltiness. Taste the pork first; three quarters of a pound of commercial salt pork will usually season the pot on its own.
- The soda is optional and easily overdoneA full teaspoon of bicarbonate in the boiling water softens skins fast but can leave beans mushy and faintly soapy. Much less will usually do, and hard water is the strongest argument for using any.
- Moderate oven350F. The dish should stay at a bare simmer under its liquid rather than bubbling hard.
- Keep them coveredAn hour uncovered at 350F will dry the top layer to gravel. Cover the dish for most of the bake and uncover for the last fifteen or twenty minutes to glaze the surface, adding boiling water if the beans go dry.
- Acid at the wrong momentThe beans are boiled plain first for good reason: molasses and mustard slow the softening of bean skins. Do not shortcut by baking unsoaked, unboiled beans in the molasses mixture.
- ServingTurning the beans out onto a platter with the pork piled in the centre is a dining-room presentation. Slicing the pork before it goes to table makes it easier to portion.
Oscar Tschirky's book gathers the plain American cooking of the 1890s alongside the Waldorf's grand French service, and pork and beans sits squarely in the plain column. The dish is generally traced to the New England Saturday bean pot, in which beans, salt pork and molasses baked slowly overnight in the retained heat of a cooling oven so that no cooking need be done on the Sabbath; the molasses itself is a residue of the colonial trade that brought West Indian sugar syrup north in quantity. What distinguishes this version is speed. By boiling the beans tender first, Tschirky reduces the bake to an hour, though the book does not say why. The bicarbonate trick appears in some nineteenth-century manuals, where hard water and beans of uncertain age made tender skins a real problem.