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Boston Baked Beans

A baked bean dish with white beans, salt pork, mustard, and dark molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Boston 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 the beans

  1. Cover the beans with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour off the water and rinse the beans thoroughly with cold water.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the beans in a small crock.

  2. Add the salt pork on top.

  3. Sprinkle the mustard and dark molasses over the beans.

  4. Cover with water and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 5 to 6 hours, adding more water if needed.

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. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  3. Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 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 beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender during the long, slow bake.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor as it renders into the beans during baking.
Dark molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color as it caramelizes slowly in the oven.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, tangy note that balances the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Adding water during the long bake. Beans can dry out or scorch over 5 to 6 hours in the oven. Keeping them covered with liquid lets the starches soften fully and keeps the sauce from burning onto the crock.

“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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