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Salad

Baked Bean Salad

A salad of baked beans, tomatoes, and a vinaigrette of vinegar, oil, mustard, onion juice, salt, pepper, and Tabasco.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

  2. Add the onion juice, vinegar, and oil to the dry mixture and stir well.

Assemble the salad

  1. Pile the baked beans on lettuce leaves.

  2. Garnish with sliced tomatoes.

  3. Pour the dressing over the beans and tomatoes.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Baked beans
Form the bulk and body of the salad.
Ripe tomatoes
Add juiciness and fresh, slightly sweet flavor.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the oil and beans.
Wesson oil
Adds fat and a smooth, coating mouthfeel to the dressing.
Mustard
Adds pungency and helps bind the oil and vinegar together.

The step that matters

Stir the dressing well after adding the oil and vinegar. Oil and vinegar do not mix on their own. Stirring thoroughly breaks the oil into small droplets that stay suspended, so the dressing coats the beans evenly instead of separating into a greasy layer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, tomato, vinegar, mustard, pepper, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, vinegar, mustard, pepper, sauce. 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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