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Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with dried beans, pork or corned beef, molasses, 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 ↓

Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and cover with fresh water.

  3. Boil the beans until they crack open or are very tender.

Assemble and bake

  1. Transfer the beans and their cooking water to a deep baking dish.

  2. Add salt and molasses to the beans.

  3. Score the pork or corned beef and place it on top of the beans.

  4. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for four hours, adding water as needed until two-thirds done, then allow to dry 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 + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + porktop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together825 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dried beans
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and creamy through long cooking.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour, and contributes to the dark colour of the beans.
Pork or corned beef
Adds savoury, fatty flavour that seasons the beans as it renders during baking.

The step that matters

Adding water during the bake. The beans must stay submerged while they cook slowly, or they can dry out and toughen. Adding water as needed keeps them moist until they are two-thirds done, after which letting them dry out concentrates the sauce and deepens the surface.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, 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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