Toll House Baked Beans (1948)

• 1/2 lb salt pork
• 1 pint pea beans
• 2 1/2 cups chopped tomatoes, fresh or canned
• 1 tbspn molasses
• 1 1/2 tspns sugar
• 1 tspn dry mustard
• 1/2 tbspn salt
• 3 small onions
• 1 cup hot water

Pick over and wash 1 pint pea beans.  Cover with cold water and soak overnight.  In the morning, drain, cover with fresh water,, heat slowly, and simmer until skins burst.  Drain.

Scald rind of 1/2 pound of salt pork.  Scrape off a piece and put in bottom of bean pot.  Cut through rind of remaining pork at 1/2-inch intervals, making cuts 1-inch deep.  

Turn beans into pot, filling only 3/4 full, and bury section of pork in them, leaving rind exposed. Mix molasses, sugar, dry mustard, salt, and tomatoes with 1 cup hot water.  Pour over beans, then bury 3 small onions in bean pot.  

If beans are not covered with liquid, add boiling water.  Cover bean pot, and bake in moderate oven, 275 degrees, for 6 to 8 hours.  Uncover during last hour so that rind may become brown and crisp.  

Watch cooking and add water as needed.  Tomatoes may be omitted, and 2 1/2 cups water used instead.  Serves 12.

(Origin - "Toll House Tried and True Recipes" by Ruth Graves Wakefield, 1948.  Author Ruth Graves Wakefield was owner of the famed Toll House Restaurant in Whitman, Massachusetts.)

More "Lost" Toll House Recipes

Toll House Rum Biscuits with Frosting (1948)

Toll House Caramel Corn Flake Ring (1948)