Foodways Research: A Taste of Maine
The study of foodways enhances our
understanding of how individuals sustain membership in ethnic and
regional groups. The relationship between food and group assist in
interpreting group identity. The foods that people eat are often
used to describe "others" who eat differently from the mainstream
group. Most ethnic and regional groups are most usefully defined
internally, using the groups' markers of self-identification. And it
is clear that region and ethnicity are intertwined. In the United
States, a region often exhibits a culinary hybridity. For example,
in New England, Native American cuisine (corn, beans, squash) is
blended with European cuisine (wheat) mostly from England but with
touches of Africa (sugar cane, molasses). And as we move forward
historically, other immigrant groups have added their traditional
foods and spices to the mix.
The Maine Folklife
Center has embarked on a project to document Maine traditional
foods. A delicious story unfolds, from the blueberry fields of
Downeast and the fisheries of coastal Maine, to the potato fields of
Aroostook County and the bean-hole beans of lumber camps. These food
traditions have increasingly moved into community settings
everywhere, including urban settings around the state, where
established and newer immigrants are adapting their food traditions
in ways that Mainers have been doing since Europeans first arrived
and began eating, hunting, and farming alongside Native peoples.
Drawing on the wealth of foodways
in the state, "A Taste of Maine" explores how the family story,
community history, and significant events of national history are
regularly expressed through food, and teach larger lessons about
geography, history, art, and culture, as well as lessons regarding
tradition and change.
Beginning with beans.
In the beginning, there were beans. Traditional Native American
cuisine consisted of corn, beans and squash. These three foods play
a vital role in defining modern American cuisine. We find grits,
cornbread, and red beans and rice in the south, tortillas and pinto
beans in the Southwest, baked beans and succotash in the Northeast,
and pumpkin pie across the continent. English settlers in the
northeast brought a culinary tradition with them that was then
blended with local foods such as turkey, maple syrup, lobster,
clams, cranberries, corn and beans to provide Indian pudding, Boston
baked beans and brown bread, clam chowder and boiled lobster.
Maine Native people
today still make a traditional bean and corn dish known as hull corn
soup. Corn which has been soaked in ashes and water and had the skin
removed is added to yellow-eye beans and sometimes bits of meat.
Water is added and the mixture is cooked into a hearty soup. In
years gone by, Natives also baked beans with maple syrup and bear
fat in ceramic pots in the ground. Englanders adapted their own
versions of the corn soup (succotash) and the baked beans.
Across New England,
and certainly throughout Maine, a tradition of baked bean suppers
takes place in community institutions such as churches, granges, and
firehouses. The tradition of baked beans for Saturday night supper
seems to have originated with the pilgrims, who would cook enough so
that they would not have to cook on the Sabbath. The eating of beans
extends to Sunday morning as well, and many Mainers speak of eating
beans for Sunday morning breakfast. Today, bean suppers are often
used as fundraisers. For example, the Caribou Lions Club holds three
or four bean-hole bean suppers annually to raise money for their
service organization.
While Boston is
known as bean-town, only in Maine can you ever really get to know
beans. B&M (Burnham and Morrill) baked beans of Portland still bakes
beans in huge iron pots in brick ovens before they can them for
distribution around the country. The Kennebec Bean Company in North
Vassalboro packages a range of Maine-grown beans under the "State of
Maine" label and also sells many of them prepared to an old Maine
lumber camp formula. They cook varieties of beans only known in
Maine. There are other, smaller canning companies who can
traditional Maine beans as well.
Boston baked beans
are usually made from the white navy or pea bean, a small,
thin-skinned and fairly tasteless variety. However, in Maine there
are numerous varieties that are local favorites. While yellow-eye
beans are the most popular Maine bean, others are preferred in some
areas of the state. Pauleena MacDougall recently interviewed bean
grower Patricia Qua who provided substantial insight into Maine's
traditional beans.
There are little pockets [of
people who want a certain type of bean]. I tried selling
yellow-eye beans to a restaurant in Lewiston -a chain I sold to 4
other restaurants. In Lewiston they wanted the pea beans (Navy
beans) the small white variety. I don't grow those. I have a
little sales route that goes down through NH, I noticed west of
Fryeburg and North Conway they're a lot more interested in Jacob's
Cattle. And Downeast, there is a small brown bean. Northeast of
Ellsworth is a real center for Marifax beans. Something I heard
was brought in during the depression. And yellow eyes, you almost
can't give them away there in that part of the state. They love
the Marifax-I'm not sure they use any sweetener; they cook them
with salt and pepper and salt pork. They cook them for a long
time. Also, I noticed some years Soldier bean sales are higher and
no one will buy Jacobs Cattle, now this year, Jacob's Cattle are
selling very well and I have no idea why.
PM: Do you sell any beans in Aroostook County?
PQ: People come down to get them.
PM: Do you notice any preference?
PQ: Yes, yellow eye.
PM: How about King of the Early?
PQ: Yes, they are kind of the same track as Marifax. Downeast.
PM: Do you sell to any of the Maritime Provinces?
PQ: I know people in New Brunswick who grow the yellow eye beans.
PM: And in northern Maine the yellow eyes?
PQ: Yes, and also the soldier beans.
PM: What about kidney beans, does anybody buy those?
PQ: Yes, people like to make chili. But the yellow eyes probably
75-80% of my sales, then Soldier Beans, Jacob Cattle and then the
kidney beans.
PM: [pointing to some beans in her shop] Are these soy beans?
PQ: No, they are the sulfur beans, they are supposedly from the
Brewer area, originally. They cook up like a yellow eye but a
little bit sweet. [also called China yellow].
PM: Wow, you're just a wealth of information about beans! (both
laugh).
PQ: Oh, and the Bumblebee beans, these come from Garland,
actually. A lady from Rowe's orchard used to grow these. I think
they are a local heirloom type bean. They swell up very large. All
I can think of is the giant beanstalk...
There are umpteen
varieties of yellow-eye beans -these are some I saved from a lot
of different batches which have a lot of the molasses
coloring-almost half the bean is gold. These took seven years to
save out of my grading. A lot of the specialty shops like these
because they are so colorful. Now there was a Maine yellow eye
that has a very small eye. It has a lot more white. Most people
now have gone to growing the Ken Early yellow eyes, which have a
little more color with a week and a half shorter growing season,
and they are shorter. It's hard to harvest beans that grow high
and fall over. But there is another bean they grow out in the
mid-west which is Steuben yellow eye which is half white and half
molasses color. They don't have the same texture or they don't
taste the same to me. And I wonder if there is something in the
soil that makes our Maine beans taste better. I'm not sure.
Yellow eye bean:
The most popular baking bean in Maine comes in several strains
including the Steuben, which is one of the oldest of heirloom beans.
The Maine Yellow Eye Bean is the baked bean of choice for church and
grange suppers, because of its clean, mild taste has wide appeal.
Soldier Bean:
According to Patricia Qua, this is the second most popular bean in
Maine It is also an heirloom white kidney-shaped bean with a
distinctive maroon marking on the eye that resembles an
old-fashioned toy soldier. It is closest in flavor to the Maine
yellow eye.
Jacob's Cattle is a
plump, pure white, kidney-shaped bean with vivid maroon splashes. It
is full-flavored, holds its shape under long cooking, and stands up
well to plenty of seasoning.
Marifax is a dense,
chewy bean with plenty of flavor. Its origins are mysterious but
tradition has it that it was introduced by the U.S. government
during the Depression to help alleviate poverty. The only place the
bean is eaten is in one tiny area along the Maine coast where the
only viable crops are blueberries.
Sulphur or China
Yellow Bean is a thin-skinned, nearly round Maine heirloom bean that
has a tawny yellow color but cooks white and has a distinctly unique
flavor.
Cooking lore
While many people in Maine cook their beans in a ceramic bean pot,
the most unique cooking process for beans in Maine developed in the
Maine logging camps. Pork and beans, baked in a bean hole, remains
the logger's main dish. The slow, long cooking makes the bean very
digestible as well as tender and delicious. In the logging camps,
beans were served at every meal. The bean hole is a stone-lined pit
in which a fire is built until a good bed of coals forms. A cast
iron bean pot (holds about eleven pounds of dried beans) is lowered
into the pit, covered over with dirt and allowed to cook, usually
overnight. Several bean pits could keep beans cooking at all times.
It is generally
believed that the loggers learned to make bean hole beans form the
Indians; others learned from the loggers. The tradition continued
after the logging camps declined. Bean holes can be found not only
at large community suppers, but also at summer vacation camps
throughout Maine.
For more on Maine's
bean hole beans visit our
exhibits page.
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