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Lima Bean Soup

A simple soup of lima beans simmered in water with butter, salt, and pepper, served with oyster crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lima beans and walnut work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Lima Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. If using green lima beans, peel them.

  2. If using dry lima beans, cook them until the skins loosen, then remove the skins.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the beans in 1 quart of water until they are very soft and can be mashed easily.

  2. Add ¼ cup butter, salt, and pepper to taste.

  3. Serve with crisp oyster crackers.

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 + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 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 body of the soup, becoming soft and thick when boiled and mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until very soft. Lima beans must be cooked fully to break down their starches and skins, so they mash smoothly into a creamy soup rather than leaving grainy or tough pieces.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, walnut, pepper, oyster):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, walnut, pepper, oyster. 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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