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Baked Beans with Tomato

A baked bean dish with tomatoes, bacon, molasses, onion, and chile.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, boil the beans with a pinch of baking soda, then drain the water and cover the beans with cold water.

Cook and bake

  1. Add the bacon and molasses, then cook until tender.

  2. Transfer the beans to a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

  3. In a skillet, brown the onion in butter.

  4. Add the browned onion, tomatoes, chile, salt, and cayenne pepper to the beans.

  5. As it cooks down, add more sauce and a little water if necessary until the beans are 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. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 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

Beans
Form the bulk of the dish and absorb the sauce as they cook down and soften.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark, rich color to the sauce.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat that flavors the beans as they cook.
Tomatoes
Contribute acidity and body to the sauce, which thickens as it reduces.
Onion
Browning in butter first builds sweet, savory depth for the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the onion brown, deepening its flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the beans with baking soda, then drain and re-cover with cold water. Baking soda raises the pH of the cooking water, which helps beans soften. Discarding that water removes compounds that cause gas and off flavors, so the beans cook evenly and tenderly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, tomato, butter, molasses, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, butter, molasses, pepper. 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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