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Baked Pork and Beans

A baked dish of beans and salt pork cooked in a pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Pork and Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the beans in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Add baking soda and let it boil, then pour off the water.

  3. Add fresh water and boil until the beans are tender but not mashed.

Bake

  1. Clean the salt pork, score the rind, and place it in the center of the beans in a large baking pan.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until everything is nicely browned on top.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dry beans
Form the main body of the dish, softening as they cook until tender.
Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity, helping the beans soften during boiling.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the beans and its rind browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until tender but not mashed. Beans cooked too long break down and turn mushy, while undercooked beans stay firm and starchy. Stopping when they are just tender keeps their shape through baking.

“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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