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Baked Navy Beans

A baked dish of navy beans with salt pork, simmered and baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Baked Navy 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 in water.

  2. Drain and rinse the beans.

  3. Place the beans in a pot and cover with fresh water.

  4. Add the salt and bring to a boil.

  5. Reduce heat and simmer until the beans are tender.

Bake

  1. Scrape the pork and cut into strips.

  2. Layer the pork on top of the beans.

  3. Add boiling water to cover the beans and pork.

  4. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until the beans are soft and the pork is cooked through.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Navy beans
Provide the bulk of the dish and set its creamy, tender texture as they soften.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the beans as it renders during baking.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the beans and helps flavor them throughout the cooking.

The step that matters

Simmer until the beans are tender. Beans must be fully softened before baking, because acidic or cold conditions and undercooking leave them firm; the long simmer hydrates the starches so they become creamy.

“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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