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Cream of Lima Beans

A creamy soup made from soaked lima beans, onions, carrots, butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lima beans and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 131 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the dried lima beans overnight.

  2. Drain the beans.

  3. Add the beans to 3 pints of cold water.

  4. Cook the beans until tender.

  5. Rub the cooked beans through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, cook the onion and carrot cubes in 2 tablespoons of butter until yellow.

  2. Add the cream or milk, 2 tablespoons of butter, 2 tablespoons of flour, salt, and pepper to the pan.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling soup.

  4. Strain the soup.

  5. Serve the soup.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lima beans + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together131 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,494 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21,599 recipes

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

  5. Lima beans + buttertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried lima beans
Form the body of the soup once cooked and rubbed through a sieve.
Butter
Carries the onion and carrot flavor and enriches the texture of the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the soup becomes smooth and velvety.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a creamy, mellow body to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream mixture into the boiling soup. Flour-thickened dairy can clump or curdle if it meets very hot liquid abruptly. Adding it to the pan first and then stirring it into the soup helps keep the texture smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lima beans, butter, carrot, cream, flour, pepper):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Spinachabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lima beans, butter, carrot, cream, flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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