Why it works: Beans and pork 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 ↓
Pork and Beans
Ingredients
Directions
Soak the beans
Pick over the beans and cover them with soft water in a vessel the night before use.
Set the beans in a warm place overnight.
In the morning, change the water and heat the beans gradually without boiling until swollen.
Cook the pork and beans
Wash the rind of the pork and skim the beans from the water.
Add the pork to the beans and boil until soft, using enough water to cover them.
Bake
Remove 150 beans and place them in a pan, laying the pork in the center with the rind facing up.
Bake for 1 to 3 hours.
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.
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Beans + porktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,000 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
- Dried beans
- Form the main body of the dish and thicken the liquid as their starches soften during cooking.
- Pork
- Adds savory flavor and fat that enriches the beans as they cook and bake.
The step that matters
Heat the soaked beans gradually without boiling. Dried beans that are heated too fast can split or burst their skins, so they cook unevenly. Slow heating lets them swell evenly and keeps them whole for the later stages.
“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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