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Boston Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with molasses, pork, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Boston Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick over and wash the beans, then soak them overnight.

  2. Parboil the beans the next morning and drain them.

Bake

  1. Place the beans in an earthen jar and add the molasses and pork.

  2. Cover the beans with boiling water and seal the jar tightly.

  3. Bake the beans all day, keeping them covered with water until about 3 o'clock.

  4. After 3 o'clock, let them bake without adding more water, keeping the jar closely covered.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + porktop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together825 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry beans
Form the bulk of the dish, becoming tender and creamy as they cook slowly.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color, and its sugars brown during the long bake.
Pork
Adds savory fat and flavor that seasons the beans as they slowly bake.

The step that matters

Keeping the beans covered with water until 3 o'clock. Beans need steady moisture to soften fully. If the water level drops early, they can dry out and toughen, so the jar must stay covered and topped up until the later stage.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, pork):

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits less well
  4. Nutsfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, pork. 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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