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Baked Beans with Pork and Tomato Sauce

A canned bean dish with pork, tomato sauce, and spices, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Beans with Pork and Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak and freshen the beans, then drain them.

  2. Place the beans in a kettle and cover with cold water.

  3. Bring the beans to a boil, then simmer until the skins crack when blown on.

  4. Drain the beans, reserving some cooking water.

  5. Place the drained beans in a 2‑gallon iron pot with a tight‑fitting cover.

  6. Add the butter and enough reserved water to just cover the beans.

  7. Cover the pot and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 2 hours.

  8. Mix the cooked beans with the tomato sauce ingredients.

Prepare the pork

  1. Prepare the pork by covering it with cold water in a kettle.

  2. Bring the pork to a boil and cook slowly for 2 hours.

  3. Strain and clarify the grease from the pork.

Can and process

  1. Cut the pork into slices and place in cans, filling nearly full with the prepared beans.

  2. Process the cans at 240°F for 30 minutes (No. 1 cans), 45 minutes (No. 2 cans), or 60 minutes (No. 3 cans); at 212°F for 60 minutes (No. 1 cans), 90 minutes (No. 2 cans), or 120 minutes (No. 3 cans).

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Beans + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they 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

Dried beans
Form the bulk of the dish, becoming tender and absorbing flavour during slow baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing to a smooth, mellow texture.
Canned tomato pulp
Provides the acidic, savoury base of the tomato sauce and body to the beans.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomato and encourages browning during baking.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and beans, sharpening the other flavours.
Pork
Adds savoury meat flavour and fat to the beans.

The step that matters

Process the cans at the correct temperature and time. Beans and pork are low-acid foods, so they must be heated long enough at the stated temperature to destroy harmful microorganisms. Shorter or cooler processing can leave the contents unsafe, while the can size determines the required time.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, tomato, sugar, cinnamon, pork. 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.

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