Father's Day: My dad's favorite dish

Pork and Beans. Seriously. He loves them. He emailed me in January of this year stating, "I'm doing a 365 days and 365 P&B recipes challenge." My dad is hilarious, and I'm proud to be his daughter, so in honor of him today I'm writing a post about his favorite food.

When you look it up on Wiki., it has a simple page, or so it seems.
Pork and beans in the general sense of a recipe is rendered pork fat and navy beans. If you buy them at your local gorcery then you get a can of these two ingredients also stewed with tomatoes. This however didn't happen until the 1800's. "it was well established in the American diet by the mid-1800s. The 1832 cookbook The American Frugal Housewife lists only three ingredients for this dish: a quart of beans, a pound of salt pork, and pepper.^[3] According to the 1975 Better Homes and Garden Heritage Cookbook, canned pork and beans was the first convenience food." Wikipedia

Where do they come from then? While wiki says it is unknown, I'm bound and determined to find out.  Well to find that out my little mousey mouse has to do some clicking!

I believe that pork and beans is derived from basic bean dishes.  Pork and beans is considered to be a typical cowboy, on the trail, type food. You might think that the closest thing in the USA to be the ancestor of pork and beans are Boston Baked Beans, however P&B showed up around 1832 in the frugal housewife cookbook. Boston Baked Beans didn't come about until 1919 when Boston was flooded with Molasses.

Haha....my mom's favorite Molasses joke: "3 moles, a papa mole, mama mole, and baby mole were in their hole. Papa and Mama Mole stuck their heads out the top. Baby mole asked Papa mole what he smelled, and Papa said, "I smell pancakes with butter!" Baby asked Mama mole, and mama mole said, " I smell Bacon and eggs!" Baby mole said, "All I smell is Mole-asses!"

So a no for Boston Baked Beans. Let's see what else we can find.

One link was for Fabada. It's a spanish dish in origin. I think it looks awfully familiar.

There is also and egyptian dish called Ful Medames. This has been a traditional dish in daily egyptian life. As a matter of fact, the cooking method (which is that they are buried to cook) is mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud. The only difference in this dish is that there is no meat except the boiled eggs on the the side.

The picture below is ful medames.

Ok, ok, I was just having fun with these. They will establish though that beans even pork and beans have ancestors from all over the world.

So my mouse finally clicked on Baked Beans. They are generally made from pork.

The traditional beans, navy beans, used in baked beans, are originally from North America. They were taken to Italy in 1528 and France in 1547. Some say that France brought cassoulet and that is where, with the addition of other nation's traditional bean recipes, we get baked beans.
Now according to the first article I read about Pork and Beans, tomatoes were not originally used in Pork and beans. I submit therefore that the original ancestor of Pork and Beans is.....CASSOULET! :O

Well there you go; those are my findings. Remember to make the dad's in your life some special food today!

I made my dad his favorite!

P.S.: this is a creepy little boy!