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Lima or Butter Beans

Boiled lima beans seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and optional milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lima or Butter Beans

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Shell the beans and cover them with boiling water.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes or until done, then drain.

  3. Add salt, pepper, butter, and boiling milk or cream if desired.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Lima or butter beans
Provide the main body and starchy, creamy texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and moisture to the cooked beans.

The step that matters

Boil until the beans are fully done. The beans must cook long enough for their starch to soften fully and the texture to become tender. Stopping early leaves them firm and chalky in the middle, and the dish will taste unfinished even though it is seasoned correctly.

“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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