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Baked Beans in Individual Pots

A baked bean dish cooked in individual pots with salt pork, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Beans in Individual Pots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight, then drain and cover with cold water.

  2. Add the salt pork and bring to a boil, then simmer until the beans are soft.

  3. Remove the pork and slice it thinly.

  4. Drain the beans, reserving some water, and rub the beans through a sieve to remove the skins.

Make the sauce

  1. To the reserved water, add the ground white pepper and enough of the bean mixture to thicken it.

  2. Mix this sauce with the cooked beans to achieve the desired consistency.

Assemble and brown

  1. Fill individual pots half full with beans, add a slice of pork, and top with more beans.

  2. Moisten the surface with a solution of sugar dissolved in water.

  3. Brown the tops by placing the pots in a gas oven with overhead burners.

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 + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  2. Beans + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pork + white peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together791 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Beans + white peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried beans
Form the main body of the dish and, once sieved, thicken the sauce.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seasons the beans as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the moistened surface brown in the oven.
Ground white pepper
Adds a mild, warm aroma and gentle heat to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the tops. Sugar on the surface caramelises quickly under direct overhead heat, so the tops can scorch before they colour evenly. Watch the pots closely and stop once the surface is golden.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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