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Baked Beans

A baked bean dish cooked with butter, salt, molasses, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,799 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°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.

  2. Soak the beans overnight.

  3. Cook the beans as you would for boiled beans.

Season and bake

  1. Add a little butter and coarse sea salt.

  2. Stir in the molasses.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a pudding dish.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours, or until nicely browned.

  5. Add a little hot water occasionally to prevent drying out.

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

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

  2. Beans + molassestop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + molassestop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Provide the main body and starch that give the baked beans their bulk and texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour, and helps the surface brown during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing flavour and a softer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Keep the beans moist while baking. Long baking evaporates water, so the beans can dry out and scorch. Adding hot water now and then keeps the mixture saucy and lets the sugars in the molasses brown evenly rather than burn.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, molasses. 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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