Skip to main content
Main

Lima Bean Soup

A creamy soup made from soaked lima beans, milk, and a white sauce, seasoned with salt and paprika.

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

Why it works: Lima beans and onion work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 331 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lima Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the lima beans in cold water for 10 to 12 hours.

  2. Cook the beans in the same water with the onion until tender.

  3. Rub the cooked beans through a sieve to create a puree.

Finish the soup

  1. Make a white sauce with the remaining ingredients and add it to the bean puree.

  2. If the soup is too thick, dilute it with the bean cooking water.

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

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

  2. Lima beans + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lima beans
Provide the main body and starchy base of the soup once pureed.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the soup's texture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the white sauce so it blends smoothly into the puree.
Fat
Carries flavor and adds richness to the white sauce.

The step that matters

Rub the cooked beans through a sieve. Pressing the beans breaks down their cell walls and fibers, producing a smooth puree. Leftover lumps or skins will leave a grainy texture in the finished soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lima beans, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lima beans, milk. 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

German Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes