Name: Lima Bean Salad
Ingredients: fresh lima beans or California dried beans; salt; pepper; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; a few drops of onion juice; French dressing or mayonnaise; crisp lettuce leaves; hard boiled eggs

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lima Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

If using fresh beans, boil in salted water until tender.
If using dried beans, soak overnight, then boil gently until tender.
Drain the beans and let them cool.

Dress and serve

Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Add chopped parsley and onion juice.
Pour over French dressing or mayonnaise.
Arrange on crisp lettuce leaves and garnish with hard boiled eggs.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 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

Lima beans: Form the main body of the salad and provide its starchy, tender texture.
French dressing or mayonnaise: Adds moisture and fat, coating the beans and carrying the seasoning.
Hard boiled eggs: Add richness and a soft, creamy contrast to the firm beans.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley, onion, lettuce, egg):

Chickpeafits better
Lentilsfits better
Black-eyed peafits better
Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, onion, lettuce, egg. 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.