Skip to main content
Main

Boston Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with white beans, salt pork, sugar, mustard, molasses, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boston Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans in cold water overnight, then drain.

  2. Add fresh water and simmer the beans until soft but not broken.

Bake

  1. Transfer the beans to a covered pan and add the diced salt pork.

  2. Mix the salt, brown sugar, mustard, and molasses in a cup, fill the cup with boiling water, and pour over the beans.

  3. Add enough water to nearly fill the pot.

  4. Add more water until nearly done.

  5. Let it cook dry.

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 + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Small white beans
Form the bulk of the dish and turn tender and creamy during long cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the beans as they cook.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep caramel-like flavor to the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce thicken and darken as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer until soft but not broken. Beans cooked too hard stay firm, while overcooking splits their skins and turns them mushy. Gentle simmering softens the starch evenly so they hold their shape through baking.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits less well
  4. Lentilsfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, mustard, molasses. 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesMolasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipes