Name: Baked Pork and Beans
Ingredients: 2 ½ cups beans; 1 pound fresh pork; 2 teaspoons mustard; 2 teaspoons brown sugar; milk (for moistening)

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 Pork and Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the beans in plenty of cold water and cook slowly for one hour.
Drain the beans and place them in the bottom of a pan.
Salt the pork and place it on top of the beans.
Dissolve the mustard and brown sugar in ½ cup of water and pour it over the beans.
Keep the beans moist while cooking, and at the end, pour a little milk over them instead of adding more water.

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 + porktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,000 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,445 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,386 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Beans + milktop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,266 recipes

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