Skip to main content
Main

Baked Beans and Brown Bread

A slow‑cooked bean dish flavored with salt pork, mustard, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 and Brown Bread

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. Pick over and wash the pea beans; cover with cold water and soak overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans, cover with fresh water, and cook slowly below boiling point until soft, then drain.

Bake

  1. Place ¼‑inch slices of salt pork in the bottom of an earthen bean pot or covered crock.

  2. Mix the salt, mustard, and molasses in a cup; fill the cup with boiling water and pour the mixture over the beans.

  3. Add enough more boiling water to cover the beans.

  4. Cover the bean pot and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 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

Pea beans
Form the bulk of the dish, softening during slow cooking to a tender texture.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the beans as they bake.
Molasses
Contributes sweetness and deep color while helping the beans brown during baking.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that balances the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Cook the beans slowly below boiling. Keeping the water below a boil lets the skins stay intact while the interior softens evenly. A hard boil can break the beans apart and leave them unevenly cooked.

“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.

More baked beans recipes

Boston 154with Pork 8Canadian 8in Earthen Pots 3Chicago 3New England 3 See all 214 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesMolasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipes