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Baked Beans

Beans soaked overnight, boiled with salt pork and sugar, then baked with pork rind and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Parboil the beans

  1. Place the soaked beans in a kettle with cold water and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Change the water and add the salt pork.

  3. Boil until the beans are nearly tender.

Bake

  1. Remove the beans with a skimmer and place them in a baking dish with the pork in the center.

  2. Cut the rind of the pork into small squares and sprinkle the sugar over the top.

  3. Bake for 3 hours.

  4. Add bean broth if the beans bake 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).

  2. Beans + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Provide the bulk of the dish and, as they cook, the starch that thickens the sauce.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seeps into the beans during baking.
White sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Add bean broth if the beans bake dry. Beans absorb liquid and can scorch or dry out over a long bake. Adding reserved bean broth keeps them moist and lets the sauce stay silky rather than pasty.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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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