Baked bean chilli con carne
A "quick cheap and healthy" recipe from 1974
Hello, and welcome to Mag Hags, the culture and history newsletter that every modern woman should know.
We’ve wrapped up Season One of our podcast (listen here!) and we’ll be getting started on Season Two very soon. In the meantime, we’ll be continuing to dive into the glossy archives of women’s magazines, right here on Substack, to find out what’s still hot and what’s definitely not.
Mag Hags is independently produced by us, Franki and Lucy. If you’re enjoying it, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. It costs £3.50/month or £35/year. Paid subscribers also have access to the entire back catalogue of paywalled articles.
I’ve been obsessed with the idea of cooking one of the recipes from our vintage magazines ever since Lucy and I discovered the British Lamb advertorial in the very first episode of the podcast. I very nearly gave into temptation while reading 1972 Woman’s Own which featured not only the tomato tripe pancakes I keep banging on about, but a dish called “chicken Tahiti” which involved roasting a chicken with pineapple rings.
As Lucy mentioned in last week’s newsletter, we are currently working on Season 2 of the show and, as I leafed through one of the upcoming issues, one recipe in particular caught my eye. The feature is called Cooking With Style and it comes from a 1974 magazine, the title of which I shall keep to myself for now since we haven’t yet announced the new season’s lineup. This DPS is filled with “quick, cheap, and tasty recipes” and the one I’m going to share with you has been taken from the Cut the Cost Cookbook by Sonia Allison. You can still buy it! Although I’d recommend reading the whole newsletter before you commit.
“It’s plain she knows very well the problem of the working wife shopping and cooking in a hurry,” reads the copy. “And her Quick Chilli Con Carne was a success in this writer’s kitchen.” Here it is:
Serves 5
A can (about 1lb) of minced steak and onions in gravy
1 can (about 1lb) of baked beans in tomato sauce
1 crushed clove of garlic
1 level dessert spoon dried red and green pepper flakes
½ level dessert spoon of caraway seeds
2-4 level dessert spoonfuls chilli powder
Salt and pepper to taste
YES, YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY. Baked beans. In a chilli. I simply had to see it for myself.
I already had garlic, caraway, baked beans, rice and chilli powder in the cupboard (there is a delightful little note at the bottom explaining that chilli is “less fierce than cayenne but more potent than paprika” and advising that we take the precaution of adding it little by little if we’re not sure of our spice tolerance). But I would need to pop out to get the meat and also some pepper flakes since it turns out the jar I have expired in 2021. I’m not sure if it’s Sonia Allison or the magazine’s writer who recommends the “excellent” M&S mince but I decide to take the suggestion seriously and head to the food hall on Streatham High Road. The question is, do they still sell canned meat?
They do! Success! In fact, they sell more than one version. They also sell canned chilli con carne which makes me wonder if I should sack off this whole charade. But I’m committed to the bit now and so, having located a mixed pepper grinder and picked up a green juice and some kimchi to reassure myself that it’s still 2025, I head home to whip up my abomination of a lunch.
Have you listened to the podcast yet? Check it out here.
The instructions say to just tip everything into a saucepan and bring it to the boil but, pedantic as I am, even I cannot bring myself to do that. I allow the garlic and spices a minute’s head start and then tip in my cans. I confess I do have a bit of a moment as the baked beans slop their way in. I say a silent prayer of contrition for my participation in culinary atrocities. Lo siento.
Allison says to serve it with rice and either green vegetables or a salad. She does not elaborate on how you might prepare these so I steam some broccoli and dump it alongside. Time to eat.
Look, it’s not disgusting. I wouldn’t say it’s great either. But it is filling. And actually, it improves as I eat. Or maybe it’s just that the heat from the chilli is building and I can’t taste anything any more. The great news is it really does serve five, which means I now have enough to last me all week.
I think there was a part of me that was hoping this would turn out to be secretly delicious. Or, at the very least, I hoped to trounce people’s expectations with a “fun hack”. But it basically just tastes like what it is which is baked beans and canned mince with a load of chilli thrown in. Maybe it’ll improve overnight once the flavours have had a chance to meld.
I can’t even say it was cheap. The canned mince cost £4. You can get fresh minced beef for less than that. And the baked beans cost £1.40. I suppose I could have bought own-brand ones but why not just get kidney beans for 49p and tinned tomatoes for 47p? It still wouldn't be a chilli but it would be a shade closer.
However, in 1974, steak mince would have cost around 80p per lb (450kg), which is over £10 in today’s money. As the feature reads, Allison “really gets down to the nitty gritty of saving money” and her cookbook is “full of useful tips for making less expensive food as attractive as possible.” In that context I have to say that adding some garlic and spices to steak and onions in gravy more than fulfills the brief.
Personally, I’d skip the baked beans next time but when we look at these kinds of recipes, I think we’d do well not to feel too smug. The farming industry has changed a lot since 1974 and mass production now allows us to buy meat far cheaper than previous generations. But at what cost? We’ve destroyed the environment and chucked animal welfare under the bus. But hey, we tell ourselves, at least we’re not eating meat out of a can.
I also made a video documenting my vintage cooking adventure. Check it out on our Instagram or Tik Tok.
What’s the best thing you’ve ever eaten out of a can?
See you next time!
