Skip to main content
Main

Curried Lima Beans

A simple dish of lima beans sautéed with onion, butter, and curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and lima beans 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 ↓

Curried Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and sauté until soft.

  3. Stir in the curry powder and cook for 1 minute.

  4. Add the drained lima beans and mix well.

  5. Season with salt to taste and heat through.

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. Onion + lima beanstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

  2. Butter + lima beanstop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lima beans
Form the bulk of the dish, supplying starch and a tender, creamy texture when heated.
Butter
Carries the curry powder and onion flavours and adds richness to the dish.
Onion
Softens while sautéing, adding sweetness and a savoury base for the curry.
Curry powder
Provides the defining spiced, aromatic flavour when bloomed briefly in hot fat.

The step that matters

Stir in the curry powder and cook for 1 minute. Curry powder contains fat-soluble aromatic compounds that bloom when briefly fried in hot butter, releasing more flavour. Cooking it too long can scorch the spices and turn them bitter.

Swap the onion

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

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

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