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Baked Pork and Beans

A slow‑cooked dish of beans and salt pork baked with water, salt, pepper, and optional molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Pork and Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pick over the beans, wash, and soak them overnight in cold water.

  2. Par-boil the pork and cut it into thin slices.

  3. Drain the soaked beans and place them in a pot with enough fresh cold water to cover them.

  4. Add the bicarbonate of soda, cover, and boil for 15-20 minutes, removing the scum as it rises.

Cook the beans

  1. Pour off the water, replace it with boiling water, cover, and boil until tender.

  2. Drain the beans and season with pepper.

  3. Add salt if the pork is freshly cured.

Bake and serve

  1. In a deep baking pan, layer half of the beans, then the sliced pork, and top with the remaining beans.

  2. Pour ½ to 1 pint of boiling water over the mixture.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C).

  4. Every hour, add ½ to 1 cup of boiling water as needed.

  5. If the beans start to burn, cover with a tin pan to allow the top to brown.

  6. Serve hot or cold.

  7. Cold beans can be made into a salad.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + molassestop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together897 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

Beans
Form the bulk of the dish and, once baked slowly, turn creamy and tender.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seasons the beans as they bake.
Bicarbonate of soda
Raises the pH of the soaking water, helping the beans soften and cook more evenly.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep colour to the baked beans, optional in this dish.

The step that matters

Adding water during the bake. Beans absorb liquid as they bake and can dry out, scorch, or stay tough at the surface. Topping up with boiling water keeps them moist so they cook evenly and become tender.

“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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