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Minneapolis Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with navy beans, salt pork, sugar, mustard, pepper, and onion, cooked slowly in an oven.

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 ↓

Minneapolis Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the beans.

  2. Soak the beans overnight in cold water.

  3. Drain the beans.

  4. Cover the beans with fresh cold water in a half-gallon jar.

Bake

  1. Add the salt pork, sugar, mustard, pepper, and onion to the jar.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) for 6 to 8 hours or overnight.

  3. Add hot water as needed to keep the beans covered.

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

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

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

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

  4. Beans + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Navy beans
Starchy legume that softens during long soaking and baking to form the dish's body.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory depth that slowly flavors the beans during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce darken and thicken as it bakes.
Table mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that balances the sweetness of the sauce.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and savory background flavor to the beans.

The step that matters

Keeping the beans covered with water. Beans exposed to air during long baking can dry out, toughen and scorch on top. Adding hot water as needed keeps them tender and moist, and hot water keeps the oven's cooking temperature from being interrupted.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, sugar, mustard, pepper, onion. 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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