Name: Lima Beans
Ingredients: 2 cups lima beans; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; 2 tablespoons butter

Why it works: Lima beans and butter work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lima Beans

Ingredients

2 cups lima beans
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons butter

Directions

Prepare

Shell the lima beans and soak them in cold water for 15 minutes.

Cook and serve

Cook the beans in boiling salted water for 25 to 30 minutes.
Drain the beans well and season with pepper, salt, and butter.

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.

Lima beans + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together414 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together468 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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