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Boston Baked Beans

A slow-cooked bean dish with salt pork, sugar, and boiling water, baked for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boston 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 in plenty of cold water and bring to a boil.

  2. Parboil the beans until the skins wrinkle, changing the water 2-3 times.

  3. Drain and wash the beans thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Place the beans in a deep Boston bean pot and lay the scored pork on top.

  2. Add the sugar, salt, and pour enough boiling water to cover the beans.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 8-12 hours, keeping a cover on for the first 7 hours.

  4. Add more boiling water once or twice during baking.

Serve

  1. To serve, remove the pork first, then pour out the beans without using a spoon.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  2. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dried pea beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender and creamy during the long slow bake.
Salt pork
Renders fat and flavour into the beans as it bakes slowly on top.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep, dark colour and flavour as it caramelises slowly.

The step that matters

Parboil and drain the beans. Parboiling softens the skins and changing the water removes compounds that cause gas and bitterness, so the beans bake evenly and cook tender rather than tough.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Black-eyed peafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, pepper. 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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