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Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with white beans, bacon, molasses, mustard, tomatoes, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the beans until almost tender.

  2. Drain the beans and transfer them to a baking dish.

  3. Pour enough hot water over the beans to cover them.

Season and bake

  1. Add salt, mustard, molasses, and tomatoes.

  2. Cover the mixture with thin slices of bacon.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 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 soup beans
Provide the main body and starchy texture of the dish.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and dark colour, and a deeper flavour to the beans.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture to the sauce around the beans.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour, and browns on top in the oven.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until almost tender. Dried beans must be cooked enough before baking, because acid and sugar in the sauce slow softening, so undercooked beans may stay firm after the bake.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Tomatothe 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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