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Boston Baked Beans

A dish of baked beans cooked with salt pork and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boston Baked Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beans

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

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and place them in fresh cold water.

  3. Parboil the beans until the skins crack when blown on, then thoroughly drain them.

Bake

  1. Put the beans into a bean pot with a little coarse sea salt and the fat salt pork, gashed on top.

  2. Fill the pot with boiling water and bake at 350°F (175°C) for eight hours, adding water occasionally as it cooks.

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 + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 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

Dried beans
Form the body of the dish, softening slowly into a tender, creamy texture during long baking.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the beans and enriches their texture.

The step that matters

Parboiling the beans until the skins crack. Parboiling softens the bean skins and starts cooking the interior. Draining thoroughly removes starchy cooking water and surface residue, so the beans bake evenly and the sauce stays properly thick.

“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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