Pork ’n Beans: the more you eat, the more you….
Looking back at my early childhood years, I really believe that if it weren’t for beans our family would have likely starved. It seemed that most of our suppers included one of the tasty legumes in my mom’s repertoire - pinto beans (my father’s favorite), Great Northern and navy beans, large limas (also known as butter beans), black-eyed and crowder peas, and occasionally red kidney or black beans.
And while I loved every pot of momma’s slow cooked beans, simply seasoned with ham hock, salt, pepper, and a few herbs, one of my childhood favorites was pork ’n beans. Especially when she mixed in slices of cheap wieners, topped them with those crunchy canned fried onions, and baked them for an hour or so.
The exact origin of pork and beans is murky at best. What we do know is that ancient European cooks were known to have used preserved meats to flavor peas and other legume dishes. The English referred to these dishes as “pease porridge,” the French called them “bouillon de pois,” and the Italians “pudding di piselli.” The following is a typical Italian recipe for “Dish Made from Peas” from the year 1475:
“Let peas come to a boil with carob. When they are taken form the water, put in a frying pan with bits of salt meat, especially that balanced between lean and fat. I would wish, however, that the bits had been fried a little beforehand. Then add a bit of verjuice, a bit of must, or some sugar and cinnamon. Cook broad beans in the same way.” — Platina: In the Right Pleasure and Good Health (from the De Honesta Voluptate et Valetudine, as translated by Mary Ella Milham)
In America, baked bean dishes, including pork and beans, are thought to have began with the indigenous Penobscot, Narragansett, and Iroquois tribes, who slow-cooked beans in clay pots buried in holes filled with hot stones. They flavored their bean creations with onions, maple syrup, and bits of animal meat and fat. Seventeenth century European colonists quickly adopted this timeless Native cuisine, using the skills and knowledge of Old World bean stew cookery to develop their own flavors and variations.
The first recorded recipe for pork and beans was published in the 1829 edition of The American Frugal Housewife by Lydia Maria Child, calling only for beans, salt pork, and black pepper. In 1886, the cookbook Practical Housekeeping: A Careful Compilation of Tried and Approved Recipes by Estelle Woods Wilcox recommended adding a little molasses and salt pork to the beans and baking them for six hours or longer. She notes, “This is the Yankee dish for Sunday breakfast.”
Yes, pork and beans and other baked bean dishes were originally part of the Sabbath breakfast meal. Puritan housewives, in observation of their holy day, were not allowed to cook from sun-up to sun-down Sunday, so they baked a large pot of beans all night Saturday, serving them the next morning with codfish cakes and brown bread. Leftover beans became Sunday’s lunch.
In the late 1800s, pork and beans became a staple of the Old West. On the prairies of the Great Plains, chuckwagon cooks fed hungry cattle-driving cowboys food that was fast to prepare and easy to transport. Canned beans (and sometime dried) along with slab bacon, hot biscuits, canned tomatoes, and strong coffee were common meal fare.
In Boomtowns like Deadwood, Tombstone, and San Francisco, a nickel beer would get patrons a free all you could eat lunch buffet of beans, bread, potatoes and sausages. And while canned pork and beans were certainly available, most establishments favored making their beans from scratch, as in this recipe found in the 1886 edition of Cooking for Profit by Jesus Whitehead:
“Baked Pork and Beans.
“Baked Pork and Beans.
Wash and pick over a large heaping cupful of navy beans and steep them in water over night. Put them on next morning with fresh water to more than cover, and baking soda the size of a bean and let boil about an hour. Then carry them to the sink, pour all into a colander letting the water run away and put back into the saucepan with cold water enough to come up to a level. Boil again and in a few minutes they will be soft. Season with a little salt and tablespoon of molasses. Put them into four pint bowls or tin pans, lay an ounce slice of salt pork on each and bake half an hour.”Wash and pick over a large heaping cupful of navy beans and steep them in water over night. Put them on next morning with fresh water to more than cover, and baking soda the size of a bean and let boil about an hour. Then carry them to the sink, pour all into a colander letting the water run away and put back into the saucepan with cold water enough to come up to a level. Boil again and in a few minutes they will be soft. Season with a little salt and tablespoon of molasses. Put them into four pint bowls or tin pans, lay an ounce slice of salt pork on each and bake half an hour.”
Commercially canned pork and beans (known as America’s first convenience food) are said to be the creation of Gilbert Van Camp (see the sidebar), a trained tinsmith and grocer who in 1861, along with his wife Hester, began canning fruits and vegetables for their Indianapolis family store. Keenly wary of their customers desires and needs, Gilbert soon added ketchup as well as a version of Hester’s family bean recipe flavored with cured pork.
Legend has it that at sometime in 1861 or 1862 Van Camp secured a lucrative contract to supply the Union Army with Hester’s canned pork and beans, providing product awareness and means of expansion. Unfortunately the veracity of this tale is surrounded in controversy.
Other controversial issues surrounding pork and beans has to do with when and how Hester’s original recipe came to include tomato sauce — pork and beans as we know them today. Some say it was Gilbert’s sixteen year old son, Frank, who, after tasting a can of the beans for lunch, felt them to be rather bland and added some ketchup to boost their flavor. Both he and his father were so pleased with this change that the company’s bean recipe was altered to reflect the addition of tomato sauce.
Another version of how tomato sauce came to be added to Hester’s bean recipe is that she herself made the change. According to Robert R. Smith of Fishers, Indiana, the great, great nephew of Hester Van Camp who wrote in a 2006 email to the Los Angeles, Metropolitan News-Enterprise, “She modified an old Raymond family recipe by adding tomato sauce.”
of how pork and beans with tomato sauce came to be, according to a 1935 trademark application Gilbert and his eldest son Cortland Van Camp began selling their beans drenched in tomato sauce sometime between 1882 and 1885. Advertising their new product as “Boston Baked Beans Prepared in Tomato Sauce,” the Van Camp Packing Co. sold over sixty-seven thousand cans the first year. Encouraged by its success, Van Camp expanded his advertising/marketing campaign and by the turn of the century was the dominant seller of pork and beans, with six plants throughout the country.
After 70 successful years, Van Camp Canning was sold to James and John Stokely in 1933 who changed the name to Stokely-Van Camp Inc. However the flagship brand of Van Camp’s pork and beans are still available in stores today.
Van Camp’s also makes a version of pork and beans that substitutes hot dogs for the pork under the brand name of Beanee Weenee. July 13 is National Beans ’n Franks Day
Other popular American canned bean brands include:
H. J. Heinz Company began canning Boston Baked Beans with Tomato Sauce in 1886. The product was heavily advertised domestically and was the first company to market pork and beans outside the U.S.
Hunt Foods was originally founded in 1888 by Joseph and William Hunt to focus on canning California’s booming fruit and vegetable crops. In 1941 canned pork and beans were added to the product line and by the early 1950s were being marketed in the Philippines along with Hunt’s Tomato Sauce and Hunt’s Catsup. Today Hunt’s Pork and Beans commands 86% of the Philippine canned bean market.
Bush Brothers and Company was started in 1897 by A. J. Bush, teacher and businessman, but is would be 1969 his son Fred, C. J. Ethier, his daughter’s husband, and grandson Condon Bush developed the recipe for their baked beans, sold today under the Bush’s Best label. Today Bush’s baked beans is America’s most popular brand.
Campbell’s Pork and Beans were originally produced for them by the Van Camp cannery. This however changed in 1921 under the leadership of John T. Dorrance, Campbell’s president, who directed the company’s focus to soup and pork and beans.
In the 1930s Del Monte considered marketing its own brand of pork and beans, going so far as to design and print a label featuring their famous logo and a bowl of beans against a dark green background. For an unknown reason, the labels were never used. Del Monte does offer Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce although most particulars are obscure, aside from them being produced in India.
Today you can find any number of canned baked bean brands on your grocers shelf, as well as numerous recipes. There are beans with bacon or pork, and those without; some with molasses, and some with brown sugar. There are even some for vegetarians. With so many varieties in the market you are sure to find one that appeals to your tastebuds.
For those of you with a more adventurous spirit, why not make your own bean dish. I’ve included what I feel is a great baked bean recipe, but if it doesn’t appeal to you, a Google search with provide you with more options than imaginable. Whichever direction you choose to go, I wish you a rooten, tooten good time.
