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Boston Baked Beans

A slow-cooked dish of navy beans with salt pork, molasses, sugar, mustard, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 overnight in cold water.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and add fresh water.

  3. Parboil the beans until the skins burst.

Bake

  1. Place the pork in the beans, then add the salt, molasses, sugar, and mustard.

  2. Pour 1 quart of hot water over the mixture.

  3. Cover and bake for 6 to 8 hours.

  4. Uncover during the last hour to let the beans brown.

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. Molasses + sugartop 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

Navy beans
Form the bulk of the dish, turning tender and creamy during the long bake.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seeps into the beans as they cook.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color, and helps the beans brown at the end.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salt and the molasses.

The step that matters

Parboil the beans until the skins burst. Parboiling softens the bean skins so they can absorb the seasonings. Stopping too early leaves tough skins, and boiling too long breaks the beans apart before the long bake.

Swap the beans

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

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

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