Skip to main content
Main

Baked Kidney Beans

A baked dish of kidney beans with onions, pork, tomatoes, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Kidney Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, parboil the beans with the onions.

Bake

  1. Put the mixture into a bean pot and stir in the tomatoes, salt, sugar, and pepper.

  2. Add the pork to the beans, ensuring water barely covers them.

  3. Two hours before the beans are done, bring the pork to the top to brown.

  4. Bake for about five hours at 300°F (150°C).

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  4. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

  5. 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

Kidney beans
Form the bulk of the dish, becoming tender and creamy during long slow baking.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor, and browns on top to enrich the beans.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and blend into the sauce.
Canned or stewed tomatoes
Provide acidity and liquid that body the sauce as it reduces.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Add the pork so water barely covers the beans. Too much liquid makes the beans soupy, while too little lets them dry out and scorch during the long bake. Keeping the level just at the beans' surface helps them cook evenly and form a thick sauce.

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, pork, tomato, sugar):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, pork, tomato, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes