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Baked Pork and Beans

A baked dish of pea beans, salt pork, onion, mustard, molasses, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Pork and Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the pea beans in cold water overnight.

  2. Drain the beans.

  3. Simmer them in fresh cold water until soft enough to pierce with a pin, being careful not to boil them.

  4. If desired, boil the onion with the beans.

  5. Drain the beans in a colander and rinse with cold water.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the beans and onion in a bean pot.

  2. Scrape the rind of the salt pork until white and cut it into half-inch strips.

  3. Bury the pork in the beans, leaving only the rind exposed.

  4. Mix the salt, mustard, and molasses in a bowl.

  5. Fill the cup with hot water and pour it over the beans.

  6. Add enough more water to cover the beans.

  7. Cover and bake for eight hours.

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 + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  4. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. 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

Pea beans
Form the bulk of the dish, becoming tender and creamy during the long, slow cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that slowly seasons the beans, with the rind left exposed to crisp.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color, and helps the sauce thicken and darken as it bakes.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that balances the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Beans cooked at a hard boil can break apart and split their skins, while gentle simmering keeps them whole and evenly tender for the long bake.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, mustard, molasses):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Welsh onionfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, mustard, 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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