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Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with dried beans, molasses, pork or corned beef, cooked slowly in an earthen dish.

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.

Soak and boil

  1. Soak the dried beans overnight.

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

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

Assemble and bake

  1. Transfer the beans with their cooking water to a deep earthen dish.

  2. Add a little coarse sea salt and the molasses.

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

  4. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for four hours, keeping it nearly covered with water until two-thirds done.

  5. Allow it to dry out towards the end of baking.

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 bulk of the dish and, once cooked, give it a soft, creamy body.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark color, and deepens the flavor during long baking.
Pork or corned beef
Fat and lean meat that renders into the beans, adding richness and savory flavor.

The step that matters

Keeping the beans nearly covered with water. Beans that dry out early can toughen and split unevenly, so water is kept near the surface until they are two-thirds done. Only then is the top allowed to dry, which concentrates the sauce and browns the meat.

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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