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Bow Ties with Fennel, Green Beans and Baby Limas

A pasta dish with bow‑tie pasta, fennel, green beans, baby lima beans, tomatoes, olives, and parsley.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Fennel and pasta work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 49 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Time8 to 10 minutes

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil.

  2. In a large nonstick skillet, heat olive oil over medium‑high heat.

  3. Add chopped onion and fennel; cook, stirring often, until softened, about 5 minutes.

  4. Add minced garlic and fennel seeds; cook, stirring, for 1 minute.

  5. Stir in vegetable broth and frozen baby lima beans; bring to a simmer.

  6. Stir in green beans and salt; reduce heat to medium and simmer until all beans are tender, 15 to 20 minutes.

  7. Add canned crushed tomatoes and kalamata olives; simmer, stirring occasionally, until flavors have blended, about 5 minutes.

  8. Stir in chopped parsley and freshly ground pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Shortly before sauce is ready, add bow‑tie pasta to boiling water; stir to prevent sticking.

  2. Cook pasta, stirring often, until just tender, 8 to 10 minutes.

  3. Drain pasta well and place in a large warm serving bowl.

  4. Add bean mixture to pasta and toss to coat.

  5. Serve sprinkled with Parmesan cheese if desired.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Fennel + pastatop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lima beans + green beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8 recipes

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

  3. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Fennel + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Fennel seeds
Add a warm, aromatic anise-like flavor to the sauce.
Green beans
Provide a tender, firm texture and fresh vegetable bulk to the sauce.
Baby lima beans
Add a creamy, starchy texture that thickens the vegetable sauce slightly.
Kalamata olives
Add briny, salty depth and savory richness to the tomato sauce.
Crushed tomatoes
Provide acidity and body, forming the base of the sauce.
Bow-tie pasta
Carries the chunky sauce, catching pieces of vegetables and beans in its shapes.

The step that matters

Cook the pasta until just tender. Pasta keeps softening after draining, so pulling it while still slightly firm keeps it from turning mushy when tossed with the hot sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, onion, fennel, garlic, green beans, tomato, parsley):

  1. Beansbetter flavor fit
  2. Chickpeabetter flavor fit
  3. Lima beansthe original
  4. Sesameabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, onion, fennel, garlic, green beans, tomato, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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