Matt Probert wrote:

> There are two schools of suggestion here, one is that it is of Italian
> origin, and one that it is of "native American" origin, though no one
> suggests which particular native American people, that said New
> England and Boston in particular claim to have a heritage of baked
> beans.

Does Durgin Park have a web site? That's a 200-odd-year-old restaurant
in Boston's Faneuil Hall marketplace which makes quite a point of
marketing their Boston baked beans. They probably know something of the
history of the dish.

What we know now of baked beans probably came from a few different
places. Indians would definitely have had lots of experience making
beans in a variety of ways (beans were definitely a mainstay of Indian
agriculture), but the pork and molasses would have been totaly
unavailable. Boston was a hub of molasses traffic, being a corner of
the trade triangle funneling rum and molasses out of the West Indies,
and African slaves back in.

So I'd guess (without a shred of scholarship) that modern baked beans
are an evolved recipe from the Indians through the New England colonists
and onto your table. Or between Ann Margaret's thighs if you prefer...

Gunther Anderson

p.s. And let us not forget the Great Molasses Flood...

p.p.s. But why is this in rec.food.drink? Baked bean daiquiris?