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Boston Pork and Beans

A slow‑cooked bean dish with salt pork, baking soda, and sea salt, baked for six hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boston Pork and Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick over the beans.

  2. Soak them overnight in cold water.

  3. Wash the beans.

  4. Drain the beans.

  5. Boil them in plenty of cold water with the baking soda until the skins crack, about 15 minutes.

  6. Drain the beans again.

Assemble the pot

  1. Place them in an earthen pot.

  2. Add the coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover with hot water.

  4. Scald the salt pork with hot water.

  5. Score the rind.

  6. Place the pork in the center of the beans.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F oven for six hours.

  2. Add hot water as needed to keep the beans moist.

  3. Remove the pork when it becomes crisp and looks cooked.

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 + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 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

Small white beans
Form the body of the dish, becoming tender and creamy as they cook slowly.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the beans, and its rind crisps during baking.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's alkalinity, helping the bean skins crack and soften.

The step that matters

Keeping the beans moist during the long bake. Over six hours in the oven, water evaporates and the beans can dry out or scorch. Adding hot water as needed keeps them moist and lets the starches gelatinise into a creamy texture.

“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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