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Dry Lima Beans

A simple dish of cooked lima beans seasoned with butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dry Lima Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, change the water and put the beans in fresh hot water with a little salt.

  3. Cook the beans for about 2 hours until done.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with butter and flour, then add the cream.

  2. Cook for a few more minutes 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lima beans + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

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

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Lima beans + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dry lima beans
Form the main body of the dish, with their starch giving a soft, creamy texture when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded flavor.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce when heated with fat and liquid.
Cream
Adds fat and body, making the sauce richer and creamier.

The step that matters

Cooking after the cream goes in. Once cream is added, keep the heat gentle for the few minutes it takes to cook. Hard boiling can make cream separate or scorch on the bottom of the pot, while gentle heat lets the flour thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream. 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.

More lima beans recipes

Creamed 13Boiled 8Canned 8Dried 6Stewed 6Baked 3 See all 92 →

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