Name: Hygenic Baked Beans
Ingredients: 1 quart beans; 3 quarts water; ½ cup cream or butter; salt to taste

Why it works: Beans and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,341 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓

Hygenic Baked Beans

Ingredients

1 quart beans
3 quarts water
½ cup cream or butter
salt to taste

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

Soak the beans in water for 6 hours.
Boil the beans in the same water for 3 hours.

Finish and bake

Add cream or butter and salt.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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.

Beans + creamtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,341 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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 dish its substance and soft, tender texture.
Cream or butter: Adds fat and richness, softening the flavour and giving the beans a smoother, moister finish.

“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.