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Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with navy beans, pork or corned beef, molasses, and salt.

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 ↓

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. Soak the dried beans overnight in water.

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

  3. Boil the beans until they are tender.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the beans to a deep baking dish and add a little coarse sea salt and molasses on top.

  2. Place the pork or corned beef on top, scoring the rind.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour or longer, keeping the dish nearly covered with water until two-thirds of the water is gone.

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. Molasses + porktop 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

Navy beans
Provide the bulk and starchy body that the dish is built around.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep, dark color during the long bake.
Pork or corned beef
Releases fat and flavor into the beans as it bakes, and its rind crisps on top.

The step that matters

Keeping the dish nearly covered with water while baking. Beans that dry out on the surface toughen and scorch, while the slow evaporation of the liquid concentrates flavor and thickens the sauce. Topping up the water keeps the beans moist and tender through the long bake.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, pork. 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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