Baked Beans

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

baked beans familiar as a canned product, are derived from a traditional New England dish, Boston baked beans, for which navy beans (see haricot bean) are baked with spices and molasses (see treacle) in a dish in the oven. The Boston connection seems to have arisen because Puritan families in or around Boston used baked beans as a sabbath dish. Use in print of the term ‘Boston baked beans’ dates back to the 1850s.