Black Bean Soup – journalofantiques.com

RECIPES: The following recipes are wonderful in a fireless cooker [if you are inclined to make one or to use an antique], as they benefit from long, slow cooking. They are also easily adapted to a crock pot or to the usual low temperature stove top simmering, but for shorter cooking times. Black Bean Soup adapted from Margaret J. Mitchell: Fireless Cook Book, 1909

1 pint black beans
1 quarts water
1 small onion
2 stalks celery
2 teaspoons salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon mustard
Cayenne to taste
3 tablespoons butter
1 ½ tablespoons flour
2 hard-cooked eggs, sliced
1 lemon, sliced

Soak beans overnight, drain and add 2 quarts water. Mince the onion and celery and saute in 1 ½ tablespoons butter; add onion and celery to the beans, and when boiling put them into a fireless cooker for from 8 to 12 hours. Rub the soup through a strainer [or puree in a food processor], add the seasonings and correct to your taste.

Saute the remaining 1 ½ tablespoons butter with flour for 2 minutes, add the resulting roux to the bean mixture, and boil together for 5 minutes.

Pour soup over the sliced eggs and lemon in a soup tureen and serve hot. Boston Baked Beans adapted from Delicious fireless Cooked Dishes, 1919. Pick over one quart pea beans, cover with cold water and soak overnight. In the morning drain, cover with fresh cold water, heat slowly to boiling point, add teaspoon soda.

Again drain beans, throwing bean water out of doors, not in sink, add ¾ pound salt pork, leaving rind exposed. Mix 1 tablespoon salt [if salt pork is not very salty in itself], ½ tablespoon mustard, 1 cup boiling water, and pour over beans.

Then add enough more boiling water to cover beans. Put in bean pot or casserole dish and cook until noon, using one radiator [the soapstone cylinder pre-heated on a stove or in an oven] heated to 450 degrees. Heat two radiators to 450 degrees and replace with beans in cooker. Bake until evening.

If you wish to serve the beans at noon-day meal, start them the night before and use two radiators in morning. When I reheat the radiators for the beans, I put in Brown Bread, and bake it in the same compartment for 3 hours, remove it, and leave the beans in until ready to serve.