Name: Baked Pork and Beans
Ingredients: 1 cup dried beans; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 1 pound pickled pork, cut into large dice; 2 tablespoons molasses; 1 onion, sliced; 1 teaspoon mustard; water

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 Pork and 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

Soak the beans overnight.
In the morning, boil the beans with baking soda until the skins crack when blown upon.

Bake

In a crock, combine the beans, pickled pork, molasses, sliced onion, and mustard.
Cover with water and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 5 to 6 hours.
Add water as needed to prevent drying out while cooking.

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 + mustardtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,242 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

Dried beans: Provide the main body and starchy texture of the finished dish.
Baking soda: Raises the pH of the cooking water, helping beans soften and their skins loosen.
Pickled pork: Adds salty, savoury flavour and fat that enriches the beans during slow baking.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark colour and a deep, slightly bitter flavour.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth as it softens in the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding water during the long bake. Beans absorb liquid and the sauce thickens over hours in the oven. Without added water the beans can dry out and scorch, and they may stay firm and unevenly cooked.

Swap the onion

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

Lettucefits better
Welsh onionfits better
Broccolifits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, molasses, mustard. 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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Baked Pork and Beans