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.

          

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.