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Bean Cakes

Bean cakes are fried cakes made from baked beans, egg, milk, cracker crumbs, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,266 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Bean Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the left-over baked beans in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg and milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in enough cracker crumbs to form a thick mixture.

  4. Shape the mixture into small cakes.

Fry

  1. Fry the cakes in hot lard until golden brown.

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 + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,266 recipes

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

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Beans + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Baked beans
Provide the main body and flavour of the cakes.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the cakes hold their shape.
Milk
Adds moisture, keeping the mixture soft and cakes tender.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the mixture so it can be shaped.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the cakes a golden, browned surface.

The step that matters

Forming the thick mixture before frying. If the cracker crumbs are too few, the mixture stays loose and the cakes can fall apart in the hot fat. Enough crumbs make it firm enough to shape and hold together while frying.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Cocoafits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk. 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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