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Boston Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with salt pork, molasses, mustard, and onion, cooked slowly in a jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

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 the beans

  1. Pick over and wash the beans, then soak them overnight in cold water.

  2. Drain the beans, add baking soda, and cover again with cold water.

  3. Boil the beans for 20 minutes, or until the skin cracks.

Assemble and bake

  1. Boil the salt pork for 20 minutes, saving the water.

  2. Place the onion and pork in the bottom of a bean jar.

  3. Fill the jar with beans and pour the molasses mixed with seasoning over them.

  4. Cover with the reserved pork boiling water and bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for 5 to 6 hours.

  5. Cover while baking and add water as needed.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. 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

Beans
Provide the bulk of the dish, becoming tender and creamy during the long slow bake.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color, and helps the beans darken as they bake.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's alkalinity, which helps the bean skins soften.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the beans as they slowly cook.

The step that matters

Slow baking with the jar covered. Long, low heat lets starches gelatinize and collagen soften so the beans turn creamy rather than tough. Keeping the jar covered and topping up water prevents the beans from drying out and scorching.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, molasses, mustard, pork):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Welsh onionfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, molasses, mustard, pork. 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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