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Salad

Lima Beans Salad

A salad of cooked lima beans dressed with olive oil, vinegar, horseradish, salt, pepper, and minced pimento served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and horseradish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 79 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lima Beans Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the minced pimento with the cooked lima beans.

  2. In a bowl, combine olive oil, vinegar, horseradish, salt, and pepper.

  3. Let the dressing stand for at least 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Place the bean mixture on lettuce leaves.

  2. Pour the dressing over the salad and serve.

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. Lettuce + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Lima beans + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked lima beans
Form the bulk of the salad and provide its main texture.
Olive oil
Carries the flavours of the dressing and coats the beans with richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Let the dressing stand for at least 30 minutes. Standing lets the vinegar, salt and horseradish mellow and spread their flavour through the oil, so the dressing tastes balanced rather than sharp when poured over the beans.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, pepper, lettuce, vinegar, horseradish):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, pepper, lettuce, vinegar, horseradish. 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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