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Boston Baked Beans

A traditional dish of soaked beans cooked with salt pork and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and replace the water with fresh water.

  3. Boil the beans for 1 hour, then drain again.

Bake

  1. Place the beans in an earthen jar that is smaller at the top than the bottom.

  2. Add the raw salt pork, molasses, and a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover the beans with water and boil, keeping them covered until the last water is added.

  4. Remove the cover and let the beans brown until they are a light brown color.

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).

  2. Beans + molassestop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pork + molassestop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together825 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried beans
Form the bulk of the dish and, once cooked, absorb the sauce to become tender.
Raw salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seeps into the beans during the long cooking.
Orleans molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color, and helps the beans brown at the surface.

The step that matters

Removing the cover to brown. Once the cover is off, the exposed surface dries and browns from the sugars in the molasses. Uncovering too early can leave the beans pale and dry, while leaving them covered too long prevents the browning the dish depends on.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, molasses):

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits less well
  4. Nutsfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, molasses. 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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