Name: Salt Beef or Pork, with Mashed Beans
Ingredients: 3 to 4 lbs beef or pork; ½ cup water for each pound of meat; 24 lbs beans; 2 teaspoons pepper; 1 lb fat; 6 onions

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salt Beef or Pork, with Mashed Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

Soak the meat overnight in water. In the morning, wash the meat in fresh water and squeeze to remove salt.

Cook the meat and beans

Place the meat in a kettle with ½ cup of water for each pound and boil for 2 to 3 hours. In two vessels, divide the beans into four pudding cloths and boil them with the meat for 2 hours. Remove the meat and beans. Combine the meat in one pot and the beans in another.

Mash and serve

Add 2 teaspoons of pepper and 1 lb of fat to the beans and mash them with a wooden spatula. Serve the mashed beans with the meat, optionally adding 6 fried sliced onions for extra flavor.

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.

Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,242 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,733 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 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: Form the main body of the dish; mashing them thickens the mixture into a smooth, starchy purée.
Beef or pork: Provides the main meat; long simmering softens its connective tissue until it is tender.
Fat: Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the mashed beans.
Onions: Frying them brings out sweetness and aroma as an optional topping.

The step that matters

Soak and rinse the salted meat. Soaking in water and rinsing draws out surface salt from the cured meat. Skipping this step can leave the whole dish too salty, since the meat is simmered and served with the beans.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, pepper, onion):

Sesamefits about as well
Beansthe original
Peanutfits less well
Soybeanfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, pepper, onion. 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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Beef Broth67 recipes

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Salt Beef or Pork, with Mashed Beans