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Boston Baked Beans

A traditional dish of soaked white beans cooked with salt pork, molasses, mustard, and baking soda in a pot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans in fresh water overnight.

  2. Change the water and parboil the beans until the skins wrinkle.

  3. Pour off the water and mix the beans with salt.

Assemble the pot

  1. Place the beans in an earthen bean pot and add the piece of fat salt pork on top.

  2. In a cup, mix molasses, dry mustard, and baking soda, then pour over the beans.

  3. Fill the pot with warm water and cover with the earthen lid.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the bean pot in the baking frame of the cooker with one heated disc below and one above.

  2. Bake all day until hot and moist.

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. Beans + porktop 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

Small white beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender and creamy during the long slow bake.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that slowly melts into the beans as they bake.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep brown color to the beans.
Dry mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that balances the sweetness of the molasses.
Baking soda
Raises the pot's alkalinity, which helps the beans soften and brown during baking.

The step that matters

Parboil until the skins wrinkle. Parboiling partly cooks the beans before the long bake. Stopping when the skins just wrinkle keeps them from breaking down into mush during the slow oven cooking.

“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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