Skip to main content
Main

Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with navy beans, salt pork, bacon, molasses, sugars, mustard, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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. Pick and wash the navy beans.

  2. Boil the beans until the skins come off.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a pot and fill it with the beans.

  2. Place the onion in the center and lay the bacon strips across the top.

  3. Add the molasses, white sugar, brown sugar, mustard, salt, pepper, and enough hot water to cover the beans.

  4. Bake for at least 6 hours at 300°F (150°C).

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. Mustard + oniontop 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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Navy beans
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender, creamy texture during baking.
New orleans molasses
Adds sweetness, depth and dark colour, and thickens the sauce as it bakes.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory richness that flavors the beans and sauce as they cook.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat that renders into the beans and browns on top.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory sweetness as it softens in the pot.

The step that matters

Bake for at least 6 hours at 300°F (150°C). Beans need long, gentle heat for their starches to fully soften and absorb liquid. A low, slow bake keeps the skins intact and lets the sauce thicken without scorching. Cutting the time short leaves the beans firm and the sauce thin.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More baked beans recipes

Boston 154with Pork 8Canadian 8in Earthen Pots 3Chicago 3New England 3 See all 214 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesMolasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipes