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Baked Beans with Pork

A hearty dish of navy beans simmered with pork, onion, brown sugar, molasses, mustard, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Beans with 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. Drain and rinse the beans, then place them in a pot.

Cook

  1. Add the pork, onion, brown sugar, molasses, mustard, salt, and pepper.

  2. Pour in the water and bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 2-3 hours until beans are tender.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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 + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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

Navy beans
Provide the main body and starchy texture of the finished dish.
Pork
Adds savoury richness and fat that flavours the beans as they simmer.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, colour and a deep, slightly bitter flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salt and the molasses.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and savoury depth as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the beans are tender. A rolling boil can break the bean skins and leave the beans mushy, while under-cooking leaves them firm inside. Keeping the heat low and covered lets the beans soften evenly as they absorb the liquid and seasoning.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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