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Baked Beans

A slow‑baked bean dish with pickled pork, molasses, and baking soda.

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 ↓

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 overnight.

  2. Boil the beans for one hour.

Assemble the jar

  1. In a gallon jar, layer the beans, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper.

  2. Place the pickled pork on top of the beans.

  3. In a cup, mix the molasses with the baking soda. Pour in boiling water.

  4. Pour the mixture over the beans, filling the jar nearly full.

Bake

  1. Cover the jar and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for five to six hours, or all day for best results.

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 + molassestop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + peppertop 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

Small white beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender and creamy during the long bake.
Pickled pork
Adds savory, salty flavor and fat that seasons the beans as they cook.
New orleans molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color, and gives the beans their dark, caramelized flavor.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking liquid's pH, helping the beans soften and brown during baking.

The step that matters

Keeping the jar covered during the long bake. A long, slow bake in a sealed jar lets the beans cook gently in their own liquid. If the liquid evaporates too much, the beans can dry out and scorch, so the cover and enough liquid matter throughout.

“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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