Great recipes
Tonight I’m reading The New England Yankee Cookbook as thunder and pounding rain shake the house and lightening brightens the dark sky. This 1939 book by Imogene Wolcott is packed with traditional recipes like berry slumps or grunts, made with fresh blueberries topped by moist dumplings, clam chowder and an indian pudding made with cornmeal and molasses. As I drink last year’s plum wine I turn the pages and slip back into a romanticized world of turning maple tree sap into syrup, drinking eggnog while caroling on Boston’s Beacon Hill and making old fashioned butterscotch candy on a wood burning stove.
What recipes did the builders of this house prepare?
Here’s the delicious recipe for Baked Beans with Maple Syrup:
- One quart navy or pea beans
- 1/2 pound fat salt pork
- 1 onion
- 1/2 cup maple syrup
- 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
- 2 teaspoons salt
Soak beans overnight. In the morning cook in fresh water until the skins burst. Drain the beans. Put an onion in the bottom of the bean pot, add beans. Mix syrup, salt and mustard and pour over beans. Put pork down into beans. Pour boiling water to cover. Bake in a 250 degree oven for 6-8 hours. Add water as needed to keep the beans covered.
This recipe works well in a crock pot.
Little Compton, RI
Here’s the Old Fashioned Butterscotch recipe mentioned above:
- 2 cups brown sugar
- 1/4 cup molasses
- 1/2 cup milk
- 2 T water
- 2 T vinegar
Combine ingredients; cook until mixture cracks when dropped into cold water.Pour into buttered tins and mark into squares.
Do you have other New England favorite recipes? I’d love to hear about them!
I'd love to hear from you!