Name: Bean Town Beans
Yield: Serves 6 to 8.
Cuisine: United States
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon dry mustard; ½ pound smoked slab bacon, with rind on; 1 large onion, chopped; 2 cups dried beans (pea, navy, or soldier); ¼ cup blackstrap molasses; 2 bay leaves, crushed; ½ teaspoon each salt and black pepper; pinch of cayenne pepper, or dash Tabasco

Preparation info

Serves
6 to 8
.

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

I Hear America Cooking

By Betty Fussell

Published 1986

About

Kenneth Roberts, the New Englander who wrote Northwest Passage, recalled with nostalgia the one-horse bean carts of his youth, carts that ameliorated “the lot of the New England housewife who was so unfortunate as to have no professional help.” The driver perched under a roof with a box in front, a box behind, and a bell “like a broken front-door bell.” In the box in front were beans and salt pork; in the box behind were brown bread, white bread, cakes, and pies. The