<p> Durgin Park Recipes</p><p>Boston Baked Beans</p><p>2-quart bean pot 2/3cup molasses 2 pounds beans- California pea beans preferred of York State beans 4 teaspoons salt 1 pound salt pork ½ teaspoon pepper 8 tablespoons sugar 1 medium-sized onion</p><p>Soak beans overnight. In the morning parboil them for ten minutes with a teaspoon of baking soda. Then run cold water through the beans in a colander or strainer. Dice rind of salt pork in inch squares, cut in half. Put half on bottom of bean pot with whole onion. Put beans in pot. Put the rest of the pork on top. Mix other ingredients with hot water. Pour over beans. Put in 300-degree oven for six hours. This will make ten full portions. You can’t let the pot just set in the oven” explains Edward. “You’ve got to add water as necessary to keep the beans moist. And you can’t be impatient and add too much water at a time and flood the beans.” Edward produces his Boston baked beans under the watchful eye of Albert Savage who has been the head chef at Durgin-Park for the past 35 years. Albert is probably the world’s leading specialist in Yankee cookery. He himself is an old Yankee who was born in Lithuania. He has one assistant who is a Bulgarian Yankee and another who is a Polish Yankee. “The chief difference between Yankee cooking and most other kinds of cooking is that we make our food taste like what it’s supposed to be,” says Albert. In other kinds of cooking chefs seem determined to make the food taste like something else.” Albert prepares vast quantities of the traditional baked Indian pudding. In the course of a year, if you’re found of statistics, he makes enough to float the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth and one small rowboat. The following recipe is sufficient to make one-half gallon.</p><p>Baked Indian Pudding</p><p>1 cup yellow granulated corn meal ½ cup black molasses ¼ cup granulated sugar ¼ cup lard or butter ¼ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoos baking soda 2 eggs 1-1/2 quarts hot milk</p><p>Mix all the ingredients thoroughly with one half (3/4 quart) of the above hot milk and bake in very hot oven until it boils. Then stir in remaining half (3/4 quart) of hot milk, and bake in slow heat oven for five to seven hours. Bake in stone crock, well greased inside. The fame on the Durgin-Park Indian pudding is world-wide. Long before Durgin, Park and Chandler took over the restaurant the pudding made according to this recipe was taken to sea by clippership captains who were restaurant patrons. It was made by chefs in ships’ galleys from Valparaiso to Hong Kong. The secret of its excellence lies in its slow and careful cooking. Not long ago a couple of lads came up with the bright idea of canning the pudding. They got in touch with James Hallett, explaining that they had made up some batches which they wanted him to sample. “I asked them how much cooking time they gave the pudding,” he says. “When they told me 30 minutes, I lost interest.” The Durgin-Park recipe for corn bread is basic. It may be used for tea cake or blueberries when they are in season.</p>