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Baked Beans

White and brown beans baked with tomatoes, bacon, onion, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked 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. Soak the white and brown beans in cold water with a pinch of baking soda.

  2. Boil the beans until tender.

Bake and serve

  1. Add the tomatoes, bacon, onion, and water if needed.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and sugar to taste.

  3. Place in a 350°F (175°C) oven and bake for two hours.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 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

White beans
Provide the main body and starchy texture of the finished dish.
Brown beans
Add body and a fuller, earthier flavour alongside the white beans.
Baking soda
Raises the soaking water's pH, helping the beans soften more evenly.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that give the sauce its tangy flavour.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savoury flavour to the beans.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until tender before baking. Dry beans must be fully softened before the long, low bake; they will not become tender in the oven if they are undercooked, and acidic tomatoes added too early can slow softening, so the beans should be cooked through first.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, pepper, 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.

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