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Boston Baked Beans

A slow‑cooked bean dish with salt pork, molasses, and mustard.

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

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 the beans

  1. Pick over the beans, soak them overnight in cold water, and drain in the morning.

  2. Put the beans in a stewpan, cover with water, and parboil until just soft enough to prick with a pin.

  3. Drain the beans and place them in an earthen bean pot.

Season and bake

  1. Scrape the rind of the salt pork clean and score it in strips.

  2. Bury the pork just below the surface of the beans and cover with hot water.

  3. Season the beans with salt, pepper, and molasses.

  4. Mix the dry mustard with a small amount of water until smooth, then add to the beans.

  5. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) all day, keeping the beans covered with water until the last hour.

  6. In the last hour, raise the top of the pork above the beans to brown and crisp it, and leave the pot uncovered.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  4. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pea beans
Form the bulk of the dish, softening during soaking, parboiling and long baking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor, and its top crisps and browns in the final hour.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and dark color to the beans as they bake.
Dry mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma that balances the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Keeping the beans covered with water during the long bake. Beans that dry out at the surface can toughen and split unevenly, so the liquid must stay above them until the last hour, when uncovering lets the pork crisp.

“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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