The recipe for baked beans may be based on a Native American dish in which beans were cooked with bear fat and maple syrup in an earthenware pot. European settlers may have adapted this recipe, using pork fat and molasses.
According to alternative traditions, sailors brought cassoulet from the south of France, or the regional bean stew recipes from northern France and the Channel Islands.
Most probably, a number of regional bean recipes coalesced and cross-fertilised in North America and ultimately gave rise to the baked bean culinary tradition familiar today.