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Stewed Lima Beans

A stew of lima beans cooked with onion, butter or dripping, seasoned with salt, pepper, flour, and finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lima beans and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Stewed Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the shelled beans with the onion slices until tender, then drain.

Cook

  1. Heat the dripping or butter in a pot until hot.

  2. Add the minced onion and fry until fragrant.

  3. Stir in the beans and add enough hot stock or water to half cover them.

  4. Cover the pot and simmer for 15 minutes.

  5. Stir in the minced parsley just before serving, without boiling it.

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 + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  4. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 dish, becoming tender and absorbing the stewing liquid.
Dripping or butter
Adds richness and carries the onion flavor through the stew.
Onion
Contributes aromatic flavor when fried and softened in the fat.
Flour
Thickens the stewing liquid so it coats the beans.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma added at the end to keep its flavor bright.

The step that matters

Stir in the minced parsley just before serving, without boiling it.. Prolonged boiling dulls the fresh aroma and color of herbs, so adding parsley at the end keeps its flavor bright.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lima beans, egg, beans, parsley, flour, pepper):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lima beans, egg, beans, parsley, flour, pepper. 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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