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Boston Baked Beans

A slow-cooked bean dish with molasses, salt pork, and onions, baked until brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 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.

Cook the beans

  1. Simmer the beans in water on low heat until tender, about 5 hours.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a brown earthen pot.

Bake

  1. Add the onion, molasses, salt, black pepper, and salt pork on top.

  2. Pour cold water over the beans.

  3. Bake in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 8 hours until the beans are brown.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold with mayonnaise sauce.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Small beans
Provide the bulk and starchy body that becomes soft and creamy as they cook.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color, helping the beans brown during the long bake.
Salt pork
Renders fat and savory flavor into the beans as they bake slowly.
Onion
Adds aromatic savory flavor that mellows into the beans during baking.

The step that matters

Simmer until fully tender before baking. The long oven stage mainly deepens color and flavor rather than softening dry beans, so they should be tender before going into the pot.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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