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Baked Beans

A dish of white beans cooked with pork, molasses, and water, baked slowly until tender.

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

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 white beans in soft water overnight.

  2. The next morning, wash the beans and place them in a pot with enough water to cover them.

  3. Simmer the beans over heat until they are tender, then wash them again.

Assemble and bake

  1. Transfer the beans to an earthen pot.

  2. Scald and gash the pork, then place it on top of the beans, ensuring the rind is even with the beans.

  3. Fill the pot with water mixed with the molasses.

  4. Bake for 5 to 6 hours at 300°F (150°C). If using a brick oven, let them stand overnight.

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. Pork + molassestop 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

White beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender and creamy during long simmering and baking.
Pork
Adds rich fat and savory flavor that slowly seeps into the beans during baking.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark color to the cooking liquid, deepening the flavor as it bakes.

The step that matters

Simmering the beans until tender. Beans must be fully softened before baking, because the acidic and sugary ingredients added later can toughen their skins and slow softening, leaving them firm.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, molasses. 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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