Skip to main content
Main

Baked Beans

A dish of beans cooked with salt beef or pork and butter, baked until flavors meld.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,134 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight in water.

  2. Drain and rinse the beans.

  3. Place the beans in a pot with enough water to cover them.

Cook the beans

  1. Add salt beef or pork for flavor.

  2. Simmer the beans until tender, about 1-2 hours.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the beans to a baking dish, adding fresh butter on top.

  2. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for several hours until the 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 + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Provides the main body and starchy texture that softens during soaking and simmering.
Salt beef or pork
Adds savory, salty flavor and some fat to the beans as they cook.
Fresh sweet butter
Adds richness and fat to the top layer as it bakes.

The step that matters

Simmer the beans until fully tender before baking. Dried beans soften mainly during simmering, and the low oven stage is meant to meld flavors rather than cook the beans through. Beans that stay firm at this point will remain firm after hours in the oven.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter):

  1. Peanutfits better
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Soybeanfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter. 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.

More baked beans recipes

Boston 154with Pork 8Canadian 8in Earthen Pots 3Chicago 3New England 3 See all 214 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes