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Baking

Baked Beans

A dish of white beans cooked with pork, sugar, pepper, salt, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight in water.

  2. Drain and parboil the beans until tender.

Cook

  1. Add pork, sugar, pepper, coarse sea salt, and molasses to the beans.

  2. Cook the mixture for several hours until the beans are soft and flavors meld.

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

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

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Beans + molassestop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

White beans
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender, creamy texture during cooking.
Pork
Adds fat and savory meaty flavor that soaks into the beans as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory pork and the bitterness of the molasses.
Molasses
Adds deep, dark sweetness and color, giving the beans their characteristic rich flavor.

The step that matters

Cook until the beans are fully soft. Dried beans need sustained heat to break down their starches and cell walls. If they are pulled early, they stay firm and the flavors do not have time to blend into the sauce.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits less well
  4. Peanutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, pepper, molasses. 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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