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Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with pickled pork, fresh pork, onion, ketchup, mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Grind the pickled pork and onion together.

  2. Combine the ground mixture with the boiled beans, ketchup, mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a baking dish and add the fresh pork on top.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 4 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. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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
Form the bulk of the dish and hold the sauce as they soften during baking.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury fat and depth of flavour to the beans.
Ketchup
Provides sweetness, acidity and a tomato base for the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce brown and thicken slightly in the oven.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness of the sauce.
Fresh pork
Sits on top, adding meaty flavour and fat that renders into the beans.

The step that matters

Baking the beans slowly. Long, low heat lets the sauce reduce and the flavours meld while the beans become tender and the pork cooks through. Too high a heat can dry or scorch the surface before the interior is ready.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, ketchup, mustard, sugar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, ketchup, mustard, sugar, pepper. 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.

More baked beans recipes

Boston 154with Pork 8Canadian 8in Earthen Pots 3Chicago 3New England 3 See all 214 →

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