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Baked Beans

A dish of beans cooked with molasses, vinegar, mustard, salt pork, and baking soda, baked until tender.

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 ↓

Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, parboil the beans with a pinch of baking soda.

Bake

  1. Add molasses, vinegar, mustard, and salt pork to the beans.

  2. Cover and bake for several hours, adding water as needed 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 + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + porktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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 starchy texture that the long bake turns tender and creamy.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep, caramel-like flavor during slow baking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the molasses and keeps the flavor bright.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory, smoky flavor that seasons the beans as they bake.
Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity during parboiling, helping the bean skins soften.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that cuts through the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Keeping the beans moist while baking. Beans absorb liquid over a long bake and can dry out, scorch, or cook unevenly if the pot runs low. Covering the dish slows evaporation, and adding water as needed keeps the beans submerged and tender.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Lentilsfits less well
  4. Peanutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, vinegar, 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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