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Boston Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with white beans, salt pork, mustard, molasses, and salt, cooked slowly in a bean pot.

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 ↓

Boston Baked Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a medium oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick over and wash the beans, place them in a kettle with enough cold water to cover, and leave overnight.

  2. Drain the beans, cover again with cold water, and boil until the skins crack when exposed to air.

  3. Pour cold water over the beans in a colander.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a bean pot, place ¼ pound of salt pork, cover with beans, add another ¼ pound of salt pork near the surface, then add the remaining beans.

  2. Mix the mustard, molasses, and salt, then add boiling water to cover the beans.

  3. Bake for 7 hours at 350°F (175°C).

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. Mustard + molassestop 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

White beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become soft and tender during the long bake.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seeps into the beans as they cook.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark colour to the baked beans.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that balances the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Boiling the beans until the skins crack. Boiling softens the bean skins so they can absorb the sauce and cook through evenly; undercooked beans stay firm and tough during baking.

“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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