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Boston Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with small soup beans, salt pork, salt, mustard, molasses, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Boston Baked Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans in cold water overnight.

  2. Drain the beans.

  3. Simmer the beans in fresh cold water until soft enough to pierce with a pin.

  4. Drain the beans again.

  5. Pour cold water over the beans.

Assemble

  1. Cut the pork rind into strips.

  2. Place the pork in the bottom of a bean pot.

  3. Cover the pork with the beans, leaving only the rind exposed.

  4. Mix the salt, mustard, and molasses with hot water.

  5. Pour the mixture over the beans.

  6. Add enough water to cover the beans.

Bake

  1. Keep the beans covered until one hour before serving.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F or 175°C) for 6 to 8 hours.

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 + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  2. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  3. Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + molassestop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together468 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. 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

Small soup beans
Form the main body of the dish and become tender through long simmering and baking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that slowly renders into the beans during baking.
Molasses
Provides sweetness and the dark color characteristic of the baked beans.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, tangy aroma that balances the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Simmering the beans until soft. Dried beans must be fully softened before baking, because the acidic-free but sugar-rich molasses mixture added later can keep the skins from softening in the oven.

“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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