Name: How to Bake Beans in Pots
Ingredients: 2 quarts of beans; 2 pounds of salt pork; Salt and pepper, to taste; 4 tablespoons of molasses; Boiling water, enough to cover

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 ↓

How to Bake Beans in Pots

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beans

Wash the beans in cold water.
Soak the beans in fresh water overnight.
Drain the beans.
Place the beans in a saucepan with fresh water.
Add the washed salt pork and boil for 30 minutes.
Drain the beans in a colander.
Put the beans in a pan.

Season and fill the pots

Season the beans with salt and pepper to taste.
Mix in the molasses thoroughly with the beans.
Transfer the beans to earthen pots.
Place a piece of pork in the center of each pot.
Moisten with enough boiling water to cover the beans.

Bake

Bake in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C) 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.

Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,733 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).
Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + molassestop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pepper + molassestop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans: Form the bulk of the dish and become tender and creamy during the long, slow cooking.
Salt pork: Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the beans as it cooks.
Molasses: Adds sweetness and deep color, and helps the beans brown during baking.

The step that matters

Baking overnight in a slow oven. Dried beans need long, gentle heat to soften fully without splitting or drying out. Keeping the oven low and the pots covered with liquid lets starches gelatinize slowly and the sugars caramelize gradually.

“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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How to Bake Beans in Pots