Meg Muckenhoupt begins with a simple question: When did Bostonians start
making Boston Baked Beans? Storekeepers in Faneuil Hall and Duck Tour
guides may tell you that the Pilgrims learned a recipe for beans with
maple syrup and bear fat from Native Americans, but in fact, the recipe
for Boston Baked Beans is the result of a conscious effort in the late
nineteenth century to create New England foods. New England foods were
selected and resourcefully reinvented from fanciful stories about what
English colonists cooked prior to the American revolution?while
pointedly ignoring the foods cooked by contemporary New Englanders,
especially the large immigrant populations who were powering industry
and taking over farms around the region.The Truth About Baked Beans
explores New England's culinary myths and reality through some of the
region's most famous foods: baked beans, brown bread, clams, cod and
lobster, maple syrup, pies, and Yankee pot roast. From 1870 to 1920, the
idea of New England food was carefully constructed in magazines,
newspapers, and cookbooks, often through fictitious and sometimes
bizarre origin stories touted as time-honored American legends. This
toothsome volume reveals the effort that went into the creation of these
foods and lets us begin to reclaim the culinary heritage of immigrant
New England?the French Canadians, Irish, Italians, Portuguese, Polish,
indigenous people, African-Americans, and other New Englanders whose
culinary contributions were erased from this version of New England
food. Complete with historic and contemporary recipes, The Truth About
Baked Beans delves into the surprising history of this curious cuisine,
explaining why and how "New England food" actually came to be.