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Baked Beans with Tomato Sauce

A baked bean dish with tomato sauce, bacon, onion, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Beans with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the beans in cold water.

  2. Pour boiling water with a tiny pinch of baking soda over the beans.

  3. Simmer on the back of the stove until half done, leaving just enough water to cover them.

Season and bake

  1. Add canned tomatoes, sugar, celery salt, coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and prepared mustard.

  2. Place bacon and onion slices in the bottom of a casserole or baking dish.

  3. Bake until done.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Soup beans or white kidney beans
Provide the bulk of the dish, becoming tender and creamy as they cook slowly.
Canned tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that thicken into a rich, saucy base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes and mustard.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp tang and aroma that cut through the sweetness.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savory flavor that seasons the beans as they bake.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness that deepens during baking.

The step that matters

Simmer until half done, keeping just enough water to cover. Beans cooked in too little liquid can scorch or cook unevenly, while the tomatoes added later need the beans to be partly tender so they finish softening in the oven rather than staying firm.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, tomato, sugar, celery, pepper, mustard):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, sugar, celery, pepper, mustard. 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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