Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Lima Bean Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cream of Lima Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. Drain the beans.

  3. Add cold water.

  4. Cook the beans until soft.

  5. Rub the beans through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Cut the vegetables into small cubes.

  2. Cook the vegetables in half of the butter for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove the vegetables.

  4. Add flour and salt.

  5. Stir into the boiling soup.

  6. Add the milk.

  7. Reheat.

  8. Strain.

  9. Add the remaining butter.

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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Lima beans + carrottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lima beans + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 when cooked and rubbed through a sieve, thickening it naturally.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour when used to cook the vegetables and finish the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it a smooth, creamy body when stirred into the liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness, softening the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Stir into the boiling soup. Flour clumps if dropped into hot liquid without being mixed in smoothly first. Stirring it in steadily helps it disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly rather than lumpily.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, milk, flour, butter):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, milk, flour, butter. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes