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Cooking Beans

Beans cooked with pork and baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Cooking Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pick over the beans to remove any specks or debris.

  2. Cover the beans with cold water and let them soak overnight.

  3. The next day, parboil the beans in a pot of boiling water.

Bake

  1. Skim half of the beans into a bean pot.

  2. Wash and score the pork, then place it in the pot with the beans.

  3. Pour boiling water over the beans and pork until covered.

  4. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Starchy bulk that softens during long baking, giving the dish its body.
Pork
Fat renders into the beans, adding richness and savory flavor.

The step that matters

Parboil the beans. Parboiling softens the beans and helps them cook evenly in the oven. Beans that are undercooked stay firm and can taste unpleasant, so the boil should be thorough before baking.

“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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