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Boston Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with optional salt pork, mustard, sugar or molasses, and sea salt.

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

Boston Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight and cook until tender but not falling apart.

  2. If using, cook the salt pork with the beans.

Season and bake

  1. Once tender, add mustard, sugar or molasses, and salt.

  2. Bake in a covered dish at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours, uncovering for the last 15 minutes.

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. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  3. Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beans + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Their starch gives the dish its body, and they soften slowly during baking.
Sugar or molasses
Adds sweetness and, as it caramelizes in the oven, deepens the color and flavor.
Salt pork
Renders fat and savory flavor into the beans as they cook.

The step that matters

Cook the beans until tender but not falling apart. The beans keep softening during the long bake. If they are overcooked before baking, they turn mushy and lose their shape.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Lentilsfits about as well

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