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Baked Beans

A dish of white beans baked with molasses, chili, onion, salt pork, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Boil the white beans in water for 4 hours, then drain.

  2. Place the beans in a bean jar.

Season and bake

  1. Add salt, molasses, ground chili, and chopped onion.

  2. Lay slices of salt pork on top of the beans.

  3. Add enough water to cover the beans.

  4. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 5 hours.

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

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

  2. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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. Beans + molassestop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + porktop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together825 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

White beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender during the long cooking.
Cooking molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep color as it caramelizes slowly in the oven.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seeps down into the beans as they bake.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Add enough water to cover the beans. Beans that poke above the liquid dry out and toughen during the long bake. Keeping them submerged lets them soften evenly and absorb the seasoning.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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