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Baked Beans

A slow‑cooked bean dish with bacon, onion, salt, mustard, molasses, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the beans

  1. Change the water of the soaked beans.

  2. Boil the beans until the outer skin cracks.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer a thick layer of beans in a stone crock.

  2. Sprinkle the beans with salt, dry mustard, and molasses.

  3. Add a layer of bacon.

  4. Repeat the layering until the pot is filled.

  5. Cover the pot with broth.

  6. Keep the mixture very moist and bake for 8 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 + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 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

Beans
Provide the bulk and starchy body that becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory, smoky flavor that melts into the beans during baking.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and dark color, and deepens the flavor as it bakes.
Dry mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that balances the sweetness of the molasses.
Broth
Supplies moisture so the beans stay soft and do not dry out during baking.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture very moist. Beans absorb liquid as they bake, and if the level drops they can dry out and scorch. Keeping them covered with broth lets the starches soften evenly over the long bake.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, mustard, molasses):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, mustard, molasses. 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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