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Pork and Beans

A slow‑cooked pork and bean dish baked in an earthen pot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork and 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. Pick over and soak the beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, wash and drain the beans.

  3. Boil the beans in cold water with baking soda for 45 minutes.

  4. Drain the beans and layer them in an earthen pot with pork and molasses.

Bake

  1. Top with a scored piece of pork, season with salt and pepper.

  2. Cover with hot water and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 6 hours, keeping covered.

  3. Add more hot water if necessary, and uncover to brown the top towards the end.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + peppertop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together897 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

Beans
Form the bulk of the dish and absorb the sauce as they bake.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's alkalinity, helping the beans soften.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and color to the sauce and the browned top.
Pork
Adds savory flavor and fat that enriches the beans during slow baking.

The step that matters

Uncover to brown the top towards the end. Keeping the pot covered for the whole bake holds in moisture, so the surface only browns if it is uncovered late. Adding hot water as needed keeps the beans from drying out while the top colors.

“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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