Skip to main content
Main

Baked Beans

A dish of soaked white beans cooked with pickled pork, molasses, mustard, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Soak and parboil

  1. Soak the beans overnight in cold water.

  2. In the morning, wash the beans in a colander and place them in a kettle with cold water.

  3. Bring the kettle to a boil, then drain and cover with freshly boiled water.

  4. Score the rind of the pork and add it to the kettle with the beans.

  5. Simmer until the skins of the beans can be blown off.

  6. Remove the beans and drain them immediately.

Bake

  1. Place the beans in a bean pot, bury the pork in the center, leaving the scored part above the beans.

  2. Mix 1 teaspoon of salt with 1 pint of the bean cooking water, then add the mustard and molasses.

  3. Pour the mixture over the beans.

  4. Cover the bean pot and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 6 to 8 hours, adding water as needed.

  5. For Sunday breakfast, bake overnight.

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

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

  3. Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 recipes

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

  4. Molasses + mustardtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together468 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Small white soup beans
Provide the main body and starch that becomes creamy during long, slow cooking.
Pickled pork
Adds savory fat and salty flavor that seasons the beans as they bake.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and dark color to the sauce as it thickens during baking.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy notes that balance the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Drain the beans immediately after simmering. Once the skins are loosened, the beans can overcook and split if left in hot water. Draining promptly stops cooking so they hold their shape through the long bake.

“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.

More baked beans recipes

Boston 154with Pork 8Canadian 8in Earthen Pots 3Chicago 3New England 3 See all 214 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesMolasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipes