Name: Baked Beans
Ingredients: 1 quart of beans; 2 pounds of corned beef; 1 teaspoon of mustard; 1 tablespoon of molasses; hot water; boiling water

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 ↓

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

Pick and wash the beans, then soak them in cold water overnight.
Drain the beans and cover them with hot water.
Add the corned beef and boil until the beans begin to split, about 30 to 60 minutes.
Drain the beans in a colander and rinse with cold water.

Assemble and bake

In a deep earthen pot, layer half of the beans, then the beef, and top with the remaining beans.
Mix the mustard and molasses with a little water, then pour over the beans.
Add boiling water to just cover the beans.
Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 10 hours, adding a little water occasionally.

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.

Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + beeftop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,134 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + mustardtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + molassestop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together468 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Beans + molassestop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans: Form the bulk of the dish and, as they soften, give it its tender body.
Corned beef: Adds salty, savoury meat flavour that seasons the beans as they cook together.
Molasses: Adds sweetness and dark colour, and helps the beans brown during slow baking.
Mustard: Adds a sharp, pungent note that balances the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 10 hours, adding a little water occasionally. Long, low-temperature baking lets the starches in the beans gelatinise fully and the sugars caramelise slowly. Adding water now and then prevents the beans from drying out and scorching before they become tender.