Evolution of Baked Beans: From 1800s Classics to Modern Twists

Not Really Traditional Baked Beans Recipe… Glen And Friends Cooking
Welcome back to the kitchen, friends! In today’s episode, we’re diving into the fascinating world of baked beans and their evolution through time. While exploring the roots of traditional recipes from the 1800s, we’ll be making a modern interpretation of the classic French Canadian dish, “Fèves au lard.” Join me on this culinary journey as we discuss the intriguing changes in ingredients and flavors over the years. From beans to bacon, we’ll unravel the secrets of what truly makes a dish Canadian. Stay tuned for a delightful twist on this timeless recipe!

Contemporary Fèves au Lard
Ingredients:
500 mL (2 cups) dry white pea beans or Great Northern
1 large onion, chopped
1.5 litres (6 cups) Ham stock, or chicken stock, or water
60 mL (1/4 cup) maple syrup
60 mL (1/4 cup) molasses
60 mL (1/4 cup) ketchup
10 mL (2 tsp) mustard powder
5 mL (1tsp) summer savoury (optional)
2.5 mL (1/2 tsp) ground pepper
1 piece of 340 g (3/4 lb) bacon or salt pork
Method.
Pre heat oven to 140ºC (275ºF).
Cover beans with water and soak overnight, or cover with water and boil 45 minutes.
Drain beans and place in bean pot, stir in all of the other ingredients, nestling the pork on top.
Cover tightly and bake 5-6 hours, checking occasionally to see if you need to add more liquid.
If you used a chunk of bacon / salt pork, reve and chop up before stirring back into beans.
Bake another 30-40 minutes with the lid off.

“Evolution of Baked Beans: From 1800s Classics to Modern Twists”
“Cooking Through Time: Exploring French Canadian Baked Beans and More!”
“Fèves au Lard Reinvented: A Contemporary Take on a Traditional Dish”

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L1S 0E9

Welcome Friends welcome back to the kitchen um this is not an old cookbook show Even though there’s a bunch of old cookbooks out on the countertop and I’m holding one a couple of weeks ago on the old cookbook show we did a recipe out of this cookbook from the 1800s called

Canadian baked beans and in the comment section there was a really good conversation going on about what made them Canadian and um how that was different from people’s interpretation of Boston baked beans or New England baked beans we talked about Yankee beans we talked about in the in the conversation in the

Comment section about fard which is a French Canadian dish which is uh beans with salt pork or large salet and while that conversation was going on I I thought okay I’m going to do a little bit of research I’m going to go back through my books and I’m going

To look at sort of the difference of what people perceive to be the traditional recipes and you know what those changes are through through what those changes are through time because something that I have learned over the course of of owning all of these books and going through them

Is the more ingredients that you have the farther it is from the origin Point most recipes at the origin Point have very few ingredients and most of the recipes that we think of as traditional really only happen in the last 100 years and for the most part if

You really wanted to narrow it down a little bit more only happened since the end of World War II that’s when a lot of these recipes um sort of solidified into what we now think of as traditional so we’re going to make um a modern interpretation of fev olard but

This is by no means um the traditional recipe so we’re going to start out obviously started with beans I soaked these beans overnight um if you wake up one morning and you want beans but you’ve only got dried beans do like I did in this recipe um

From a couple of weeks ago you take the beans that you need you cover them in water you put them in a pot you boil them for 45 minutes to an hour that negates the need to soak them because you’ve softened them up enough that you

Can put them in your pot and bake them and today I’m using uh White pea beans Thompson’s white pea beans and I I found it very interesting um that a lot of the traditional baked bean recipes that are out held out there it’s the recipe from the back of the bag so these

Are white pea beans you could use white Great Northern beans you could use any Bean that you like or that you have in your cupboard so when you go back into the old cookbooks um this is uh la cuisine reson French Canadian cookbook this one’s from the 1930s I’ve got a

Version here from 1967 the farther back you go um fard or or the French Canadian baked bean beans pork Sal or large Sal um maybe some mustard but not always if you were a rich family you had molasses if you were a poor family you had maple syrup those roles are are

Reversed today um the Richer people who use maple syrup and those of us that can’t really afford it would use molasses I’m lucky enough to have maple trees in my yard so I always have maple syrup on the go also have a lot of family members with with h sugar Shacks

So always have maple syrup the later additions to these recipes and this is born out also in the American in the American cookbooks so these are two American cookbooks from the 1800s um they have baked pork and beans Boston baked beans baked Yankee beans B Boston baked beans um these are the

1800s recipes they are very similar to the French Canadian recipes in that you’ve got beans salt pork or bacon maybe some mustard water in some of these bean recipes there is no sugar whatsoever um this is a Ford cookbook that recently came to my door from 1950

And it has what would be considered today the traditional Boston baked bean or New England baked beans which contains all of these things like onions get those onions in there um a lot of people consider now ketchup or tomato component so we’ll get the ketchup in there next in some molasses maple

Syrup ground black pepper mustard now I’m using a dried mustard um the farther back you go dried mustard is the norm contemporary recipes today I see a lot of people using prepared mustard like uh ballpark hot dog mustard or uh mustards like that that are already prepared with with

Vinegar really it’s up to you um next in I’m going to put summer Savory because I love summer Savory in baked beans uh if you don’t have summer Savory you don’t have to use it it’s not necessary it’s just something that I like then we come

To what I’m going to use is chicken stock the original recipes it’s always just water although in one of the recipes it does say use soup stock if you have it preferably ham stock and this is i’ I’m I’m simmering away a ham bone here to make uh split pea soup

Later so I could use that but I want it for my split PE soup so I’m going to use chicken stock but you know water straight up plain old water is really all you need I’m going to put in that much just a cover them cover the beans and we’ll stir it all

Together right and using summer Savory I like to use summer Savory in it this is how recipes move forward you make it your own you find a flavor that you like and you use it in an existing recipe that’s how we get from the point where baked beans were just literally

Beans baked with salt pork and water to the point today where we’ve got something a little more flavorful with a lot of competing flavors that sort ofelt M together over four or 5 hours in the in the oven that’s really important to move Cuisine forward is this constant change

And and trying different things if you’re static you’re dead anyway so I’ve got salt pork and I’ve got bacon and I’m going to use both um because I’ve got them so the salt pork goes in and the bacon goes in skin Side Up lid goes on now I’ve got my oven set to

275 I’m probably going to let these cook 5 6 hours I’ve still got some chicken stock here or it could be water um set aside I’m going to check them every so often and add water as needed you don’t want them to dry out you could put a

Piece of parchment over top like I did last time you could put a piece of parchment over the entire thing and put the lid on to try to hold everything in uh piece of tin foil whatever U I’m just going to come back and add liquid as

Needed and if you’re one of the countless people that asks me why my oven is so clean it’s cuz I keep it clean and I just cleaned it for hogman so we’re good to go for 2024 okay the bean pot has been in the oven for about 5 hours and I’m going to

Pull it out my plan is to take the salt pork and the bacon out chop it up mix it back in and stick it back in the oven oh that’s looking really good okay a lot of the fat from the salt pork I’m going to get rid of and the same from

The bacon we don’t really need that back in there so all the fat just get rid of that um any of the fat that has rendered into the beans is what we really want that’s solid fat don’t want that so just a rough chop I mean it’s fall apart

Tender at this point it’s been in the oven that long at a really low and slow temperature and I mean there’s not much lean on this salt pork mix that back in and then back in the oven with the lid off okay oh big beans look at

That hey CL girls hey friends baked beans baked beans uh with uh bacon salt pork what do you got in there I’ve got salt pork and bacon so this is this is the Contemporary traditional contemporary traditional contemporary Trad it what most people today would consider to be traditional feol lard or Boston baked

Beans is this your version or have you when I well sometimes I don’t know right like you know I’m asking I looked up a bunch of recipes of what is contemporarily considered to be this they all came almost the same and then I looked on the back of the the B beans

And that was the recipe that I was making essentially so that’s funny um I knew you were going there as soon as you started saying I oh yep it was on it was this will be hot it’s like the the uh shortbread recipe yeah yeah it’s the one

On the box it’s the one on the box it’s the one that works so this is quite a distance from the recipe baked bean recipe we did last time but I like that one I like that one too I really did I liked how simplistic it

Was this one is a little sweeter a little bit sweeter it’s got ketchup in it molasses and um maple syrup it’s lovely though it isn’t it isn’t um clawing sweet no it’s not glowingly sweet the onion and the mustard sort of rounds out the flavor mhm this is I mean this this is

Contemporary baked beans what what people think of when they think of Northern baked beans that’s good mhm mhm I really like that um I like the I like the older version as well because there you just tasted the beans and the and the salt pork did it had Vin what it

Had in it gave it a t was there something in it no I’m remembering something else okay sometimes I get confused we do a lot of cooking it’s easy to get confused I remember partway through the day I forget what I’m cooking CU I you know today I did three

Things and what am I doing what am I talking about now mhm so when you’re talking about those three things I was a lard Boston baked beans Yankee baked beans New England baked beans I guess that’s four things they all start in essentially the same place and they all grow at about the

Same pace and become almost the same thing in the end with varying levels of sweetness this is a great recipe um I will put up all of these at the end of the video so you can kind of look at the progression through time thanks for stopping by see you again soon

I like the diagram the sketches on that well and that’s that’s a book that came last week and it’s it’s um from Ford Motorcars oh wow and so it’s a bunch of restaurants going places it’s about going places and eating at these restaurants all across the United States

And Canada and so they’ve got a New England baked beans which is not too far from what I’ve done here so by 1950 this sort of contemporary recipe had solidified there you go I just like the sketches