Name: Boston Baked Bean Sandwich
Ingredients: cold baked beans; chopped celery; tomato ketchup; brown bread; butter

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 ↓

Boston Baked Bean Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Mash the cold baked beans in a bowl.
Mix in the chopped celery and tomato ketchup.

Assemble

Spread the mixture between slices of buttered brown bread.

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.

Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,713 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,159 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold baked beans: Provide the main body and bulk of the filling once mashed.
Tomato ketchup: Adds sweetness and acidity that flavours the mashed beans.
Chopped celery: Adds a crisp, fresh crunch to the soft filling.
Brown bread: Holds the filling and gives the sandwich its structure.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture to the bread and a fat layer that keeps it from soaking.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, tomato, ketchup, bread, butter):

Capersfits about as well
Celerythe original
Garlicfits about as well
Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, ketchup, bread, 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.