Boston’s love for beans and its nickname “Beantown” originated from the Plymouth Pilgrims Colony who learned to cook beans with maple syrup from American Indians. Baked beans became a standard Sunday meal for the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Molasses replaced maple syrup as the sweetener, leading to the birth of Boston Baked Beans. The nickname was officially adopted in 1907 during Old Home Week. Despite its origins, the recipe is no longer popular in the city. Boston is one of the oldest and largest cities in the US, with other famous nicknames including “The Athens of America” and “The Cradle of Liberty”.
The origin of Boston’s fondness for beans and its eventual nickname of Beantown can be traced back even before the city was founded on September 17, 1630. The Plymouth Pilgrims Colony, an English establishment established in North America in 1620, perhaps learned from American Indians how to cook the seeds in cans of beans and sweeten them with maple syrup. They ate beans with brown bread, which they made in the colony by mixing barley and cornmeal.
By the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, another English settlement in North America established in 1628, baked beans and brown bread had become a standard Sunday meal in the colonies. This developed when settlers cooked the beans on Sabbath and left them overnight in a pot of beans in the hot brick oven, as they were religiously prohibited from working or cooking on Sundays. When Boston emerged as a major international trading center during the 1700s, beans were still popular in the New England area, which is the northeastern part of the United States that includes Massachusetts and five other states. One of its main exports was rum and the city relied on molasses to distill the alcoholic beverage; this product was obtained from the West Indies.
Molasses, which is the by-product of sugar cane processing, has replaced maple syrup as the sweetener in beans. Many historians believe that’s when Boston Baked Beans, or baked beans prepared with molasses and salted pork or bacon, were born. The inhabitants still adhered to the decades-old tradition of cooking it the day before the Sabbath and leaving it overnight in the hot brick oven.
The stage was then set for Boston to become Beantown. This officially occurred during the week of July 28, 1907, called Old Home Week, a New England tradition that involved inviting former residents of the area to their hometowns. That particular week, residents handed out promotional stickers that each depicted a pot of beans gripped in two hands. From then on, the Beantown moniker stuck. Ironically, the same recipe that got Boston called Beantown is no longer popular in the city.
Boston is one of the largest cities in Massachusetts and the capital of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is also one of the oldest cities in the United States. Other famous nicknames for Boston include “The Athens of America”, “The Cradle of Liberty” and “The Walking City”.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
