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Baked Beans with Tomato

A simple dish of baked beans simmered with butter, onion, green pepper, and thick tomato, served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Beans with Tomato

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the chopped onion and green pepper, and cook for three minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the thick tomato and cold baked beans.

  2. Simmer until heated through and well thickened.

  3. Serve with brown bread toast.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 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

Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries the flavour of the onion and pepper.
Onion
Softens as it cooks, adding sweetness and savoury aroma to the base.
Green pepper
Adds a fresh, slightly bitter aroma and some texture to the mixture.
Thick tomato
Adds acidity and body, giving the sauce its colour and tang.
Baked beans
Their starch thickens as they heat, giving the dish its body.

The step that matters

Simmer until heated through and well thickened. Gentle simmering lets the bean starch swell and the liquid reduce, so the mixture thickens. Stirring helps prevent the bottom from scorching while the beans heat through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, tomato, beans):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, tomato, beans. 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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