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Baked Beans

A baked bean casserole with milk, butter, flour, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

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. Wash the beans and remove any bad ones.

  2. Soak the beans in water with baking soda overnight.

  3. In the morning, boil the beans in a saucepan for two hours.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the butter-flour mixture to the milk along with salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish and layer the beans with the milk mixture.

  2. Repeat the layers until all ingredients are used, finishing with bread crumbs on top.

  3. Dot the top with a few bits of butter.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  5. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

White beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender and creamy during the long boil.
Baking soda
Softens the bean skins during soaking so the beans cook more evenly.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that moistens the beans and forms the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the top brown in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a body that coats the beans.

The step that matters

Boil the beans fully before layering. Beans need to be fully tender before baking, because the 30-minute oven time is too short to soften firm beans and the starch in them needs enough heat and water to gelatinize.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, pepper, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, pepper, bread. 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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