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Boston Baked Beans

Beans simmered with salt pork, molasses, mustard, and optional onion.

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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans in cold water overnight.

  2. Drain and simmer the beans in fresh cold water until soft enough to pierce with a pin, being careful not to boil them too hard.

  3. If desired, boil one onion with the beans.

  4. Drain the beans in a colander and transfer them to a bean pot.

Prepare the pork

  1. Pour boiling water over the salt pork, scrape the rind until white, and cut the rind into half‑inch strips.

Assemble and bake

  1. Bury the pork in the beans, leaving only the rind exposed.

  2. Mix the mustard with the molasses and fill the cup with hot water, then pour it over the beans.

  3. Add enough more water to cover the beans, then lift the pork to the surface to let it crisp.

  4. Bake for 8 hours at 350°F (175°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. 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. Molasses + mustardtop 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

Beans
Form the bulk of the dish and, once cooked slowly, give it its soft, tender texture.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the beans, and its rind crisps on the surface.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep brown color to the beans as they bake.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, tangy note that balances the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Simmer the beans gently. Boiling beans hard can break their skins and cause them to fall apart, so they should cook at a gentle simmer until they are soft enough to pierce with a pin.

“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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