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Baked Beans

A hearty bean dish cooked with salt pork, tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, and seasonings.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beans

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

  2. Par‑boil the beans with the salt pork for one hour.

  3. Drain off some of the water.

Season and bake

  1. Add the sugar, salt, tomatoes, and vinegar to the beans.

  2. Place the mixture in a baking pan and top with sliced pork.

  3. Bake for 2.5 hours at 350°F (175°C).

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. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 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

Beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender during soaking and par-boiling.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the beans as they cook.
Canned tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture to the sauce around the beans.
Brown sugar or molasses
Adds sweetness and helps the beans brown during baking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Par-boil the beans with the salt pork for one hour. Beans must be cooked enough before baking, because acidic ingredients added later can slow softening. Cooking them first ensures they become tender in the oven.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

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