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Sunday 22 January 2012

Baked beans

The Native Indians in America used to flavor their beans with maple syrup and bear fat, and bake them in earthenware pots placed in a pit and covered with hot rocks. When the Pilgrims arrived, they learnt the slow cooking technique for making baked beans from the Indians. They substituted molasses and pork fat for the maple syrup and bear fat. 

The earliest reference to baked beans was in 1832 in a book called American Frugal Housewife.

Henry J Heinz started making baked beans in 1895. He advertised them as “oven-baked beans in a pork and tomato sauce”.


The 1967 album The Who Sell Out by The Who featured on its cover a picture of their vocalist Roger Daltrey sitting in a tub full of baked beans. One of its tracks is “Heinz Baked Beans.

On September 15, 1986, computer technician Barry Kirk, 32, of Port Talbot, Wales, completed the first mega ‘Beanathon’ — sitting in a bath of cold baked beans for 100 hours.


The record for the most baked beans eaten with a cocktail stick in five minutes is 271. The feat was achieved in 2014 by serial record breaker Ashrita Furman, a New Yorker who has set more than 500 world records since 1979.

The world record for eating six pounds of baked beans is 1min 48sec by New Yorker Don Lerman.


There are approximately 465 beans in a standard 415gm can of Heinz beans.

In 2008, Heinz Baked Beans became "Heinz Beanz" because the company thought the original name "a bit of a mouthful."

Baked beans are actually not baked, but stewed.

Every hour 38.5 tons of baked beans are eaten in Britain.

The average Briton eats four times as many baked beans as the average American but the Irish eat the most of all. 

Beans on toast is a teatime favorite in both Britain and Ireland.

Source Food For Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World by Ed Pearce, Daily Express

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