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Lima Beans, Eeench Style

A creamy lima bean dish with egg yolks, butter, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lima Beans, Eeench Style

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cream and egg yolks, mixing well.

  2. Add the butter and heat gently, stirring until combined.

  3. Add the cooked lima beans and toss everything together over low heat.

  4. Serve topped with finely chopped parsley.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Lima beans + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Lima beans + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lima beans
Provide the bulk and main body of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, moist texture to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream gently when heated, giving the sauce body and a silky texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a glossy, smooth finish.

The step that matters

Heating the cream and egg yolk mixture gently. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but too much heat scrambles them into grainy curds. Keep the heat low and stir constantly so the sauce stays smooth and creamy.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, butter, parsley):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, butter, parsley. 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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