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Boston Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with salt pork, simmered slowly in the oven with water.

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 ↓

Boston Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans in water overnight.

  2. In the morning, change the water and parboil the beans gently for 2 hours.

  3. Rinse the beans in fresh water and place them in a pot with the salt pork.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the beans slowly in the oven at 300°F (150°C) all day, ensuring there is plenty of water in the pot.

  2. Serve warm, and they taste better the next day.

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

Dried beans
Form the main body of the dish and soften slowly into a tender, creamy texture during long cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the beans as they bake.

The step that matters

Keep plenty of water in the pot during the long bake. Beans need enough liquid for the whole slow bake; if the pot runs dry, the beans can scorch and their starch will not hydrate evenly, leaving a poor texture.

“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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