Skip to main content
Main

Baked Beans

A slow-baked bean dish flavored with butter, curry powder, tomato, and spices.

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

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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Assemble and bake

  1. In a bean pot or a two-quart stone jar, combine butter, curry powder, beans, sugar, salt, additional butter, tomato, mustard, and chopped bird pepper. Add enough water to cover the beans.

  2. Cover the pot and bake slowly for at least eight hours.

Clean the jar

  1. After emptying the jar, wash it, fill it with wood ashes and boiling water, and let it stand in the oven for a morning to keep it clean.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 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 bulk of the dish and soften into a tender, creamy body during slow baking.
Tomato
Adds acidity and moisture that help build a rich, savory sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and salt and helps the sauce brown.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the sauce a richer, rounder mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bake slowly and covered for at least eight hours. Dried beans need long, gentle heat to soften fully and absorb the sauce. Covering the pot traps moisture so the beans stay submerged and do not dry out or scorch.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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

More baked beans recipes

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes