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Boston Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with salt pork, white beans, molasses, mustard, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pick over the beans and place them in a kettle with cold water.

  2. Bring the beans to a boil just long enough to wrinkle the skins.

  3. Drain the beans.

Assemble

  1. Add salt, molasses, and mustard to the beans.

  2. In a bean pot, layer half of the beans, then add the pork.

  3. Cover with the remaining beans.

  4. Fill the pot with boiling water.

  5. Cover the pot.

Bake and brown

  1. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for six hours.

  2. Keep the pot filled with water for the first four hours.

  3. Let the water cook away to brown the beans, keeping it covered.

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. Pork + beanstop 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. Molasses + mustardtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together468 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Beans + molassestop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry white beans
Form the bulk of the dish, with starch that softens into a creamy, tender texture during slow baking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the beans as they bake.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark color that deepens as the beans brown.
French mustard
Adds a sharp note that balances the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Keep the pot filled with water, then let it cook away. Water keeps the beans from drying out during the long, slow bake. Once it has evaporated under cover, the exposed surface can brown, which gives the dish its color.

“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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