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Boston Pork and Beans

A baked pork and bean dish cooked slowly with salt pork, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boston Pork and 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 and soak the beans overnight in cold water.

  2. In the morning, wash and drain the beans, then boil them in plenty of cold water with baking soda until the skins crack, about 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the beans and place them in an earthen pot.

  4. Add salt and cover with hot water.

Bake

  1. Scald the salt pork with hot water, score the rind, and place it in the center of the pot.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 6 hours or longer, adding hot water as needed to keep the beans moist.

  3. Remove the pork when it becomes crisp and looks cooked to prevent it from becoming too dry.

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

Small white beans
Form the bulk of the dish and turn tender and creamy during long slow baking.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's alkalinity so the bean skins crack and soften more easily.
Salt pork
Releases fat and flavor into the beans and crisps its rind in the oven.

The step that matters

Keeping the beans moist during the long bake. Beans baked for hours can dry out and scorch at the top, so adding hot water as needed keeps them moist while they soften.

“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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