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Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with kidney beans, treacle, salt pork, and a sweet‑salty sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Kidney beans and pork work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 218 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the kidney beans in cold water in a pot over the fire, then drain.

  2. Place the beans in a suitable oven pan or jar.

  3. Scrape and dice the salt pork, then place it on top of the beans.

Bake

  1. Mix the treacle and coarse sea salt into boiling water and pour it over the beans.

  2. Bake slowly in the oven for 3 to 4 hours.

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. Kidney beans + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 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

Kidney beans
Form the bulk of the dish, becoming tender and creamy as they cook slowly.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the beans during slow baking.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and deep color to the sauce as it caramelizes slowly in the oven.

The step that matters

Soaking the kidney beans. Dry beans that are not properly softened may stay firm or cook unevenly, and slow baking alone may not fully tenderize them.

“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 →

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