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Boston Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with bacon, butter, brown sugar, pepper, 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 pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boston Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the beans until almost tender, then drain.

Layer and season

  1. In a covered baking dish, layer the beans and bacon, repeating until full.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the butter and dark brown sugar.

Bake

  1. Cover well with water and bake for several hours at 350°F (175°C), replenishing water as necessary.

  2. Remove the cover during the last hour to 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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Beans
Form the bulk of the dish and soften into a tender, starchy base as they bake.
Breakfast bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savoury flavour that seeps into the beans during baking.
Dark brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavour, and helps the surface caramelise and brown.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the beans a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Replenishing the water during baking. Beans need enough liquid for the long bake; if the dish dries out, the beans can scorch and toughen instead of becoming creamy and tender.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, egg, butter, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, butter, sugar. 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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