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Pork and Beans

A slow‑cooked pork and beans dish simmered and baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork and 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

  1. If the pork is very salty, soak it overnight.

  2. Place the beans in a pot with cold water and let them soak overnight by the fire or in a warm spot.

  3. In the morning, rinse the beans in a colander.

  4. Score the rind of the pork and place it in a clean pot with the beans.

  5. Season the beans with pepper.

Simmer and bake

  1. Boil the beans slowly for about 2 hours, skimming off any scum and fat.

  2. Remove the pork from the pot.

  3. Place the pork in a tin pan.

  4. Cover the pork with the beans and add a little water.

  5. Bake in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for 4 hours.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Pork + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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

Pickled pork
Adds savory flavor and fat that enriches the beans as they cook and bake.
Dried beans
Provide the main body of the dish; they soften slowly during soaking and simmering.

The step that matters

Boil the beans slowly. Gentle simmering keeps the beans whole and tender, while skimming removes scum and excess fat that would make the dish greasy and cloudy.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper):

  1. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Soybeanfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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