Skip to main content
Main

Beans, Baked

Beans, Baked is a dish of soaked and parboiled beans cooked with pork, salt, pepper, and molasses or sugar.

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

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 ↓

Beans, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak and parboil the dried beans and pork.

  2. Pour off the water from the pork and gash the meat with a knife.

Assemble

  1. Spread half of the pork over the bottom of a kettle.

  2. Drain the beans and pour them into the kettle.

  3. Place the remaining pork on top of the beans.

  4. Sprinkle ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt over the beans and add black pepper to taste.

  5. If using molasses, pour 1 tablespoon over the mixture; otherwise, use 1 tablespoon of sugar.

Bake

  1. Hang the kettle high over the fire to avoid scorching and bake for at least 2 hours.

  2. Alternatively, add enough boiling water to cover the beans, place the kettle in a bake‑hole, and bake overnight.

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. Pepper + molassestop 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

Dried beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender and creamy during slow baking.
Pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the beans as they bake.
Molasses or sugar
Adds sweetness and deep color as it caramelizes during slow baking.

The step that matters

Hang the kettle high over the fire. Keeping the kettle high above the heat prevents the beans and sugars at the bottom from scorching, while still allowing a long, gentle bake to soften the beans.

“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