Skip to main content
Main

Beans and Pork

A hearty stew of beans simmered with pork, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beans and Pork

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight in water.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and place them in a pot.

Cook

  1. Add the pork and enough water to cover the beans.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours until beans are tender.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and pepper to taste before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Pork + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dried beans
Provide the starchy body of the dish, softening into tender beans during long simmering.
Pork
Adds savory meaty flavor and some fat that enriches the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer until the beans are fully tender. Dried beans need sustained gentle heat for their starches to soften completely. Stopping early leaves beans firm and chalky inside, so test them before serving.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper):

  1. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Soybeanfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More pork and beans recipes

Baked 27Boston 10Boston baked 3Corned 3 See all 78 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes