Let us compare two recipes for baked beans, one of the modern day and the other the oldest we can find. First the modern:

BOSTON BAKED BEANS (copied at semi-random from allrecipes.com, author “ajrhodes3″)

• 2 cups navy beans
• 1/2 pound bacon
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 3 tablespoons molasses
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 cup brown sugar

1. Soak beans overnight in cold water. Simmer the beans in the same water until tender, approximately 1 to 2 hours. Drain and reserve the liquid.
2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
3. Arrange the beans in a 2 quart bean pot or casserole dish by placing a portion of the beans in the bottom of dish, and layering them with bacon and onion.
4. In a saucepan, combine molasses, salt, pepper, dry mustard, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and brown sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil and pour over beans. Pour in just enough of the reserved bean water to cover the beans. Cover the dish with a lid or aluminum foil.
5. Bake for 3 to 4 hours in the preheated oven, until beans are tender. Remove the lid about halfway through cooking, and add more liquid if necessary to prevent the beans from getting too dry.
   

This appears to be exactly what you or I would think of as good old-fashioned homemade baked beans. Starts with dried beans, check. Long slow cooking, check. Onions, other ingredients, check. Good thing we are working or we would go off and make a batch right now.

Now let’s look at the historical sample. There were several cookbook authors working in or near Boston in the 1840s, including Mrs. N. K. M. Lee and  Sarah Josepha Hale. Mrs. Lee’s baked beans are boring beyond words: beans and salt pork comprise the entire ingredient list. Mrs. Hale’s receipt  isn’t appreciably different. It is the undeservedly obscure Mrs. M. H. Cornelius who gives us the best we can find from the era. From the 1859 revised edition of her The Young Housekeeper’s Friend (ingredient list added):

1 quart dried white or Navy beans
the rind (skin) from 1 lb salt pork, pork removed, rind cut in strips
1-2 spoonfuls molasses (size of spoon unspecified other than “large”)

For a family of six or seven, take a quart of white beans, wash them  in several waters, and put them into two or three quarts [of water] over night. In the morning (when it will be easier to cull out the bad ones, than before they were soaked), pick them over, and boil them until they begin to crack open; then put them into a brown pan, such as are made for the purpose. Pour upon them enough of the water they were boiled in almost to cover them. Cut the rind of about a pound of salt pork into narrow strips; lay it on the top of the beans, and press it down so that it will lie more than half its thickness in the water. Bake several hours; four or five is not too much. Where a brick oven is used, it is well to let beans remain in it over night. If they are baked in a stove, or range, more water may be necessary, before they are done.

Many persons think it a decided improvement to put in a large spoonful or two of molasses. It is a very good way.

Whee! We are all the way up to molasses! That’s the good news.

The bad news is we actually made this recipe once, exactly as specified. “A large spoonful or two” of molasses, and trust me we used the largest spoon we could find in the house, resisting the temptation to employ the gravy ladle,  is entirely insufficient for a quart of beans. We might as well have used an eyedropper for all the sweetening power that was conveyed.  Salty boiled beans which had done some time in the oven. Blegh.

No onion. No ketchup–and yes, they did have ketchup in the 19th century, albeit not quite in the form we use today.  No Worcestershire (understandable since the product was only invented in the 1840s, although tangy sauces of other sorts were in common use.) No dry mustard. Not even any brown sugar, perfectly well known and available almost anywhere in America at the time.

Of course you probably have dishes you make which started out as recipes in a cookbook or magazine, which you have modified over the years to suit your personal preferences to the point where the original author would not recognize it. It is entirely possible that cooks in 19th century  Boston and elsewhere were doing the same– tarting up Mrs. Lee, or Mrs. Hales, or even Mrs. Cornelius’ baked beans with additives to make those salty boiled beans a little more persuasive to the palate. If you are contemplating making baked beans for a reenactment or other historical setting, we hope this discussion has given enough background to embolden you to make your own modifications. Keep historical accuracy in mind of course, but beyond that, make something people will enjoy eating.

          

Mushrooms
Warm milk
Salt
Pepper
Veal or chicken broth, or drawn butter
Flour wet in cold milk
1 egg, beaten

Rub them white, stew in water ten minutes; strain partially, and cover with as much warm milk as you have poured off water; stew five minutes in this; salt, pepper and add some veal or chicken gravy, or drawn butter. Thicken with a little flour wet in cold milk, and a beaten egg.

Common Sense in the Household by Marion Harland, New York, 1871

Comment: As Mrs. Harland does not specify what sort of mushrooms are suitable for this recipe, we will not do so either, except to note that it would be a shame to waste this much effort on plain canned button varieties. This is apparently intended as a side dish although it would seem to make an excellent mushroom sauce if thickened just a bit more than is called for here.

          

Lima beans, removed from shells
Salt
Pepper
Butter

These beans are very fine, and should be full grown, but quite tender. Having shelled them, rinse them in cold water and boil them till soft, throwing in a small handful of salt; drain and serve them, and put over them pepper and melted butter.

From The Kentucky Housewife by Lettice Bryan, 1839

Comment: We note that these legumes, although detested by at least four generations that we know personally, were evidently not in fact engineered in a modern laboratory by enemies attempting to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids, but were indeed known and loved, or at least endured, by our long ago ancestors. If one is confronted with a lima bean and can neither flank nor flee from its presence, this is probably about the best thing you can do with it short of slipping it under the table to the dog.

          

Green beans
Salt

Cut off the stalk end first, and then turn to the point and strip off the strings. If not quite fresh, have a bowl of spring-water, with a little salt dissolved in it, standing before you, and as the beans are cleaned and stringed, throw them in. When all are done, put them on the fire in boiling water, with some salt in it; after they have boiled fifteen or twenty minutes, take one out and taste it; as soon as they are tender take them up; throw them into a colander or sieve to drain.
To send up the beans whole is much the better method when they are thus young, and their delicate flavor and color are much better preserved. When a little more grown, they must be cut across in two after stringing; and for common tables they are split, and divided across; cut them all the same length; but those who are nice never have them at such a growth as to require splitting.
When they are very large they look pretty cut into lozenges.

From The Cook’s Oracle by William Kitchiner, MD New York, 1829

Comment: Dr. Kitchiner turns into a bit of a food snob from time to time. “Those who are nice” never let their beans get so long as to require them to be split before cooking? Get real, Doc. Ahem. Other than that little objection, this is a perfectly respectable recipe for green beans. Crossbreeding between Kitchiner’s time and our own have largely eliminated the “strings” from beans so this step may be eliminated. If fresh are not available or are out of season, frozen ones may be treated as described above. The commonest reason people say they do not like vegetables is that they have only ever had them either overcooked into mush or undercooked by those who got carried away with the “al dente” craze. Moderation, as both the Buddha and the better cookbooks remind us, is the key to all things.

          

1 head of cabbage
Stuffing or dressing
Butter

Get a fine head of cabbage, not too large; pour boiling water on [it], and cover it till you can turn the leaves back, which you must do carefully; take some of those in the middle of the head off, chop them fine, and mix them with rich forcemeat; put this in, and replace the leaves to confine the stuffing; tie it in a cloth, and boil it. Serve it up whole, with a little melted butter in the dish.

From The Virginia Housewife, or Methodical Cook, by Mary Randolph, 1824.

Comment: It is a testimony to the scientific notion of “convergent evolution” that we find nearly identical recipes to this one in the ethnic traditions of nearly every part of the world in which cabbage is grown. The only variants are the specifics of the stuffing–and recipes can be found for forcemeats based on everything from ham to veal to rabbit and beyond–and what if any sauce or liquid is used to surround the dish at serving. The act of wrapping this item in a cloth and boiling it is what conveys the status of “pudding,” a word whose meaning has clearly evolved from that time to this.

          

Boiled potatoes
Clean meat drippings, butter or grease
Salt
Pepper

Put a bit of clean dripping into a frying-pan; when it is melted, slice in your potatoes with a little pepper and salt; put them on the fire; keep stirring them; when they are quite hot, they are ready.

The Cook’s Oracle by William Kitchiner, MD, New York, 1829

Comment: This is a classic method of using up leftover boiled or baked potatoes from the previous night’s dinner. If cubed or grated they become hash browns, but when sliced apparently do not merit a name of their own.

While bacon drippings are still occasionally saved by frugal cooks today, mostly for use in flavoring boiled greens or other vegetables, it was in the past more common to save the fat which cooked off of beef, ham or chicken as well. It became “clean” after it was poured through a strainer or piece of cheesecloth to remove any bits of meat which might have fallen into it. Many books recommend beef drippings for use in making pie crusts or other rough pastry, as well as its use as a direct frying agent as in the recipe above.

The only commercially available oil was that of the olive, frequently refered to as “sweet oil” in recipes of the time. This was often imported and in any case expensive, so was saved for uses in delicate settings such as salad dressings. Oil from pressed seeds like corn, sunflowers etc. lay in the future. Fats were considered valuable resources for people who lived much more in the out of doors, in the elements and the seasons, than we do today.

          

Green bell peppers
Salt
Water
Vinegar
Alum (solid piece if available; about 1 tbs. powdered if not)

The bell pepper is the best for pickling, and should be gathered when quite young. Slit one side, and carefully take out the core, so as not to injure the shell of the pepper. Then put them into boiling salt and water, changing the water every day for one week, and keeping them closely covered in a warm place near the fire. Stir them several times a day. They will first become yellow, and then green. When they are a fine green put them into a jar, and pour cold vinegar over them, adding a small piece of alum. They require no spice. You may stuff the peppers as you do mangoes.

From Miss Leslie’s Directions for Cookery by Eliza Leslie, 1851

Comment: The coring procedure called for here seems both unexpected and unnecessarily complicated. Since the core runs directly from the underside of the stem to the bottom, it would seem more logical to cut carefully around the stem end and just pull outward–any core left inside can be reached, snapped off, and shaken out with ease. Then again it is possible that it was desired to keep the stem end in place and intact, although we can think of no reason why. Do as you will.

Plain vinegar is about the simplest “pickle” there is. The pickle, of course, is the preserving liquid, not the product being processed.

          

2 dozen ears corn
1 tsp. salt
1 tbs. sugar
1 qt. milk
2 eggs, beaten
2-3 tbs. butter

Grease a deep earthen baking dish with butter; grate with a coarse grater 2 dozen ears of corn, selecting such as are of equal ripeness; add tea-spoonful of salt, tablespoonful white sugar, a quart of milk, and lastly, 2 eggs well beaten; lay a piece of butter rather larger than an egg on top of all, put it into a slow oven, bake 4 hours; if the oven is too quick [hot] it will make the pudding curdle; when done it should be nicely brown all over, and the consistency of warm mush. Good for tea or dinner; may be eaten with sugar, but a little butter is better.

From The Economical Cook-Book by Elizabeth Nicholson, 1865.

Comment: Here we see a clear indication of the complete change that has come over the corn-growing process since the advent of large commercial agribusiness. In the 19th century corn was simply corn, without the distinction that exists today between “sweet corn” intended for human consumption and “field corn” grown to be fed to animals. (We will leave varieties intended for industrial uses like corn syrup or biofuels out of the discussion entirely.)

So “green corn” here is not intended to mean that which is under-ripe, which would produce nothing but an inedible mess if cooked and severe indigestion if eaten. The ears should be fully grown, fresh and full of juice. The longer they age after ripening the harder and more dried out the kernels become, setting it on a path which would lead to the grist mill and a future as corn meal, hominy, grits, or dried cracked corn.