Boston residents and visitors alike often affectionately refer to the city by its most common nickname “Beantown,” but many Boston patrons still do not know where this quirky moniker comes from. The phrase actually stems from the once popular dish “Boston baked beans,” a local former favorite that has now fallen out of favor, with no companies in the city currently making it and very few restaurants featuring the item on the menu. Following the recipe, navy beans can be either baked or stewed in salt pork and molasses. This differs from common baked beans in which maple syrup replaces molasses and pork substitutes for bear fat. Little did chefs of the time know, they would be altering the name of the city for centuries.
The recipe for Boston baked beans finds its roots in old world trade routes. Boston served as a major port on what was then a trade triangle between the Caribbean, New England and the west coast of Africa. Mercantile ships transported slaves from Africa over to the Caribbean where they were put to work raising sugar cane on plantations. Harvested sugar and molasses would then be transported from the islands up to the New England ports where it was turned into rum and shipped either back to Africa or distributed throughout the New World. In Boston, as more and more ships arrived a stockpile of barrels filled with sugar and molasses accrued over time. Following the basic supply and demand principles of economics, rum makers had more molasses then they could put to use, making the sweet substance cheaply available for other uses. Area residents quickly found savory alternatives to traditional rum making and began incorporating molasses into their cuisine, thus Boston baked beans were born. The beans were so popular during the time period that they became intertwined with the city itself, putting Beantown both on the map and in the dictionary.