Opinion: Beale on ... Heinz Baked Beanz.(H.J. Heinz Company)

Show me a kitchen without a skulking tin of baked beans at the back of a cupboard and I'll show you a home bereft of culinary self-doubt, yes, but warmth, too. Beans maketh a house into a home.

When I was a kid the baked bean was the supreme example of fast food (cold, from the can) and one of the few experiential definitions we had of the word vegetable. Nurturer of generations of young things, the humble baked bean has made many of us what we are today: typical salt content per serving - 25 per cent of the recommended daily allowance.

Baked beans, perhaps the ultimate commodity, come in all sorts of packages, but I defy anyone to not word associate with …