>>21459121Boston used to be a hub of Big Bean and this was purely because the Caribbean sugar and molasses trade was relied on heavily by Boston industry, and with millions of gallons of molasses coming into port Boston Baked Beans became a staple. this is leftover from colonial days when the population of the 13 colonies was densest in New England and all the injuns as well as various Africans were exported en masse to slave on Caribbean plantations and send that sweet cane and molasses up nawth.
The last dying gasp of the Boston molasses industry was Great Molasses Flood of 1919 in which a giant cistern of molasses burst and wiped out an entire block of the North End.
And now, the Boston Baked Bean is a relic of past and probably nobody in living memory experienced it when it was ubiquitous.