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Processed Beans with Pork and Tomato Sauce

A canned dish of soaked beans, pork, and tomato sauce with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,713 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Processed Beans with Pork and Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Soak the beans as directed and drain off excess liquid.

  2. In a kettle, combine tomato pulp and water, then bring to a boil.

  3. Dissolve the sugar and salt in the boiling mixture.

  4. Add the ground mustard, white pepper, tartaric acid, caramel color, and cinnamon, and mix well.

Can and thicken

  1. Place pork in cans and fill them seven-eighths full with the mixed beans and sauce.

  2. If the sauce does not adhere to the beans after processing, thicken it with 2 to 5 lbs of corn starch.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together852 recipes

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

  3. Beans + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon share little aroma chemistry, yet 30,779 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the bulk of the dish and absorb the sauce as the base of the canned product.
Tomato pulp
Provides the body and acidity of the sauce and carries the flavor through the beans.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomato and tartaric acid.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its sweetness.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the beans if it runs thin after processing.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, tomato, sauce, sugar, mustard, cinnamon, pork):

  1. Cuminbetter flavor fit
  2. Capersbetter flavor fit
  3. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, sauce, sugar, mustard, cinnamon, pork. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

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