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Baked Beans

A slow‑cooked bean dish with pork, molasses, mustard, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. Drain the water and add fresh water, then place on the back of the range until noon.

  3. Check if the beans are slightly soft to pressure.

  4. Add molasses, dry mustard, baking soda, and salt.

Bake

  1. Score the pork across the rind and place it in the bottom of a deep earthen dish.

  2. Cover the pork with the beans.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 5 to 6 hours, keeping nearly covered with water until two-thirds done.

  4. Allow the beans to bake until brown.

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. Mustard + porktop 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

Beans
Provide the bulk of the dish and, once cooked slowly, a soft, creamy texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep, caramel-like flavor as the beans bake.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the cooking water, helping the beans soften.
Fresh pork
Adds richness and fat that flavors the beans during the long bake.

The step that matters

Keeping the beans nearly covered with water. Beans that dry out during the long bake can scorch and toughen on the surface. Keeping them nearly submerged until they are two-thirds done lets the starches soften fully and the flavors blend.

“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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