Boston Baked Beans

New England navy beans baked for hours in an earthenware bean pot with molasses, salt pork, and mustard until dark and glossy

Origin: Boston & New England, USA

From the journey of Beans.

Boston baked beans are small white navy beans baked very slowly in a deep, narrow-necked earthenware bean pot with salt pork, dry mustard, and molasses, until the liquid has reduced to a dark, sticky glaze and the beans are soft right through without having broken. They are the dish that gave Boston its nickname of Beantown, and on a New England Saturday night they were traditionally eaten with steamed brown bread. The Saturday is usually explained by the Sabbath. Puritan households, the account runs, set a pot of beans to bake on Saturday so that it could be eaten that evening and again on Sunday without cooking on the Lord's day, and in Boston the local baker would collect the family bean pots on Saturday morning, bake them in his large brick oven through the day, and return them in time for supper. The practice is well described, even if the Sabbath rule was only one of several reasons a dish that looked after itself for hours suited a busy household. The molasses came later than the beans. The colonists had learned to grow the bean from their Indigenous neighbours, and baked beans are often said to descend from a dish of beans cooked in pits with maple syrup and bear fat, although the details of that earlier dish are hard to document. Molasses probably entered the pot in the middle of the eighteenth century, as Boston became one of the great centres of the Atlantic molasses and rum trade and molasses became the cheapest sweetener in every New England kitchen. That is what turned the region's baked beans dark, sweet, and unmistakably Bostonian. The bean pot is part of the recipe. Its narrow mouth limits evaporation, and its thick walls hold a steady, gentle heat, which is why the beans can bake for eight hours without drying out or scorching.

Ingredients

Beans

  • 450 g dried navy beans (pea beans)
  • 200 g salt pork, in one piece
  • 1 whole medium onion, peeled and left whole

Seasoning

  • 120 ml molasses
  • 2 tsp dry mustard powder
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • 0.5 tsp freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 tbsp dark brown sugar (optional)

Method

  1. The night before, rinse and pick over the beans, cover them with plenty of cold water, and leave them to soak for at least 12 hours.
  2. Drain the beans, cover with fresh water in a large pan, and simmer gently for 45 minutes to an hour, until the skins split and curl back when you lift a few on a spoon and blow on them.
  3. Drain the beans, keeping the cooking liquid. Heat the oven to 130 °C.
  4. Cut the salt pork in two. Score the rind of one half in a deep criss-cross and dice the other half. Put the whole onion in the bottom of a bean pot or deep lidded casserole, scatter over the diced pork, and add the beans.
  5. Stir the molasses, mustard, salt, pepper, and sugar, if using, into 500 ml of the hot bean liquid and pour it over the beans. Press the scored piece of pork into the top, rind side up, and add more bean liquid or boiling water just to cover.
  6. Cover and bake for seven hours, checking every hour or so and adding boiling water whenever the beans begin to show above the liquid.
  7. Uncover for the last hour and let the liquid reduce and the pork rind brown and crisp.

Notes

Serve with Boston brown bread, and with coleslaw or hot dogs in the modern New England way. Leftover beans are traditionally eaten cold, or fried up for Sunday breakfast. Maine and Vermont cooks often use yellow-eye or soldier beans and sweeten with maple syrup instead of, or as well as, molasses. The beans can be baked in a slow cooker on low for 10 to 12 hours, although they will not reduce and darken quite as a bean pot allows.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

To explore — select an ingredient below.

Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
© 2026 The Gastrographer. All original research, narratives, and illustrations. All rights reserved.