Smyrna times., 1876-11-08
Baked Beans.

beans! This is dictum that we need not
argue, in Yankee land, where the favorite
vegetable is mis-cooked in as many differ
ent ways as there are to make poor bread.
We always sympathized in the jeremiade
of the outspoken Gail Hamilton (what
COuld have become of her if she had kept
pent up for the past dozen years y over
the decay of New England knack, in
modern days, in preparing the regulation
Sunday morning breakfast. We believe
she classed it with the most to.be-lamented
OF the Lost Arts. There are many mani.
festations of this loss; among which are
the slippery, sloppy, yellow beans of the
corner bakery-intact, globular, perversely
individual, which no man is justified in
guessing are either steamed, boiled or
baked. 1t is fundamental axiom in cor.
rect bean-baking, that no dish can be right
that is "unmussed." A whole bean is a
confession of failure in the cook. Then
there are the baked beans of the restaur-
ant; a dry, underdone, waxy, aggravating
mess. son of Yankee, who will " make
way with a plate of the average eating
house beans, when he can get an apple-pie
nine days old, or sandwich that has been
used for sign not more than a week, is
a degenerate scion. And then there are
the fashionable baked beans served in
shallow, dainty platter, more adapted to
display the china than to do Justice to the
generous, historic dish-innocent of pork,
bleached until they are havorless, and then
cooked to death. Beans cannot survive
style" 1t is as fatal to them as it is to
spare-rib, or roast-oysters, or any of the
good old-time luxuries. We have inter
viewed, specially for this occasion, house
keeper whose baked beans are worthy of
the renOwn of that ancestor of hers, who
helped through the war of the Revolution
by seeing to it that the soldiers home on
furlough, or in adjacent camps, always had
good rye-and-injun bread and baked beans
tit for a patriot. And she says that the
only secret about it is to have them lust
right" You want to soak them over night,
or parboil them in two or three waters until
they are at the cracking point. If your
appetite is not robust enough to eat pork
and you have art enough to cook them
without it, all that is required is to season
the dish to the fine point of half pinch
of salt, a single shake of the pepper
box, and lump of butter neither too
large nor too small, and have a piece of
fresh spare-rib roasted separately to
serve with them. The beans must also
be of "just the right consistency when
put into the dish for baking" So far we
believe, it is all clear. If you have stamina
enough for pork, praise your ancestry
and kind heaven; and put the sweet
cris-crossed piece Of seasoning meat,
with its possibilities of crisp rinds, in
the centre Of the dish, with slices orna-
menting the sides. All you need of the
oven is to have it "neither too hot nor too
slow" The beans must then simmer
until they are "just DONE" To secure
the exact shade of brown over the top, and
the precise degree of heat and moisture in.
side needed to bring each individual bean to
the very point of cracking and coalescing
with its eighbor-without entirely doing
it!-that is all the direction one needs as
to baking. If it isn't clear you must learn
as the boy did to swim. And then as to
serving. 1t is the sign of an effete and
over-ripe social despotism to "dish OUT a
pan of baked beans. Assert your indepen-
dance, and preserve the integrity of your
result, by placing them upon the table in
the dish in which they were cooked. Let
the servant pass around the empty china,
if you wish, to assure the family or guest
that you have it, And have enough left to
know the luxury of cold beans that have a
heart in them Thus shall one of our glo-
rious New England institutions be restored,
to add lustre to the centennial year.
Golden RNLe.