Why Exactly Do British People Eat Beans On Toast?

Lately on TikTok, I've been getting video after video of British folks defending their local cuisine, from mushy peas on chips to Chinese takeaway. I sympathize with them — Americans online have not been kind to British food, despite the nation's export of some absolute bangers (trust me, try a digestive biscuit with your morning coffee). And no dish seems to be more divisive than beans on toast.

To Americans, it almost seems like a prank. A can of Heinz baked beans dumped onto buttered toast? But in Britain, it's a celebrated staple. A 2024 YouGov ranking of the most popular British dishes had the nation putting beans on toast in fifth place, above bangers and mash and roast beef. Sir Patrick Stewart proudly declared the meal as "the only dish I can make," and one he's had "thousands of times" (via X).

Despite its fame across the British Isles, there's no real verifiable explanation for how beans on toast came to be or why it's so beloved and widely known. There's the obvious: it's a cheap and quick meal to make for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and the ingredients are readymade and easy to find. But I couldn't track down the origin of the oft-repeated claim that an executive from Heinz, an American company, invented the dish as a marketing ploy in 1927 to sell more baked beans in Britain.

We may not know exactly why baked beans go on toast so often in Britain, but there are a few reasons why the dish is a go-to for so many — and why Americans are so perplexed by it.

For one, Heinz's canned baked beans in the U.K. are offered up in a tomato sauce that lacks the pork, molasses, and other sweeteners that are in typical American baked bean recipes, an alteration apparently made to suit British tastes. Naturally, this more savory preparation makes them better suited to being poured across a slice of toasted bread.

Secondly, Heinz products landed in Britain just as two world wars were about to hit. The company was founded in western Pennsylvania in the late 19^th century and opened a factory in England in 1905. Heinz baked beans were a popular item in Britain in the first half of the 20^th century — the company claims that, during World War II-era food rationing, its canned beans were declared an essential food item by the U.K.'s Ministry of Food. Bread was never rationed during the war, so it's easy to see how beans and bread came to be happily married during this period.