Name: Boston Baked Beans
Ingredients: 1 pint dried beans (Boston pea, yellow eye, or navy); 6 oz fat salt pork; ¼ cup molasses; 1 teaspoon salt

Why it works: Beans and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boston Baked Beans

Ingredients

1 pint dried beans (Boston pea, yellow eye, or navy)
6 oz fat salt pork
¼ cup molasses
1 teaspoon salt

Directions

Pick over and wash the beans, then soak them in cold water overnight.
Cook the beans in the same water until boiling, then drain and cover with fresh boiling water.
Simmer the beans for 45 minutes, then transfer them to a bean pot with the cooking water.
Stir in the molasses.
Scald the pork rind, scrape it, and add it to the pot.

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.

Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,000 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + molassestop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pork + molassestop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together825 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).