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Baked Beans

A dish of beans simmered with butter, milk, salt, and pepper, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. The next day, put the beans in cold salted water and cook until soft.

Assemble

  1. Drain the beans and transfer them to a greased baking dish.

  2. Stir in a large spoonful of butter until melted.

  3. Add enough milk to fill the dish one quarter full.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover and bake for 40 minutes.

  2. Remove the cover and brown the 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the bulk of the dish and turn tender and creamy when cooked through.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the beans.
Milk
Provides moisture that forms a creamy sauce around the beans as they bake.

The step that matters

Cook the beans until soft before baking. The short time in the oven will not fully soften dried beans. Cooking them thoroughly before baking lets their starches swell and soften, so the beans become tender and the sauce thickens around them.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, pepper. 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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