Skip to main content
Main

Baked Beans

A dish of cooked beans with salt pork, molasses, and salt, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Examine and wash the beans, then soak them in 6 quarts of cold water overnight.

  2. In the morning, wash the beans again and place them in a pot with 6 quarts of cold water and the salt pork.

  3. Cook the beans for 30 minutes if they are fresh, or 1 hour if they are older.

  4. Drain the beans and place half in a bean pot.

Bake

  1. Gash the pork and add it to the pot with the remaining beans, molasses, and salt.

  2. Cover with boiling water and bake for 10 hours, checking to ensure they do not cook dry.

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. Pork + molassestop 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 pea beans
Form the bulk of the dish, becoming tender and creamy as they cook and bake.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the beans as they bake.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color to the baked beans.

The step that matters

Checking that the beans do not cook dry. The beans bake for 10 hours, and the liquid slowly evaporates. If the beans dry out, they scorch and the texture becomes tough, so the cook must keep them moist with added boiling water.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, molasses. 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 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesMolasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipes