Name: Baked Beans
Ingredients: 1 piece of salt pork; 1 tablespoon molasses; beans (boiled until skins crack)

Why it works: Pork and beans 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 ↓

Baked Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

1 piece of salt pork
1 tablespoon molasses
beans (boiled until skins crack)

Directions

Prepare

Place the salt pork and molasses in a bean pot or deep stone jar.
Fill the pot with beans, leaving three inches from the top.

Bake and serve

Bake until the beans are tender.
Serve hot.

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.

Pork + beanstop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,000 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Molasses + beanstop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pork + molassestop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together825 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salt pork: Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the beans as they cook.
Molasses: Adds sweetness and a deep color to the beans as they bake.
Beans: Form the body of the dish; boiling first softens the skins so the beans bake tender.